The Future Adventures of Colonel Tanya von Degurechaff
by Rippington Plasma
Summary: Taking place after the movie, Being X makes Tanya an offer, but she has more ambitious goals in mind.
1. Chapter 1

General Zettour had a sour look on his face when next he met Tanya. "Your tourism to Moskva was incredible, but diplomatically it has been nightmarish." Tanya inwardly cringed.

"As such," he continued, "it is important that you and your unit retire from the public eye for a while. But while typically that would mean an extended holiday in a far flung resort, circumstances do not permit such leisure. Intelligence informs me that Russy, humiliated by your actions, has decided to rehabilitate its mages from its gulags and form vastly larger mage groups than we can field."

"This, as well as their already substantial air forces, require you in particular to work overtime to develop means to counter these, and their overwhelming numbers of infantry and armor. To accomplish this, we now offer you carte blanche, within the means of the army, to achieve this goal. But time is of the essence."

Her mind already running overtime, her repeated, mumbled apologies to the general were taken at face value, he being well aware of her intense concentration when faced with a problem, and she was excused to carry out her orders.

Her first visit was to the intelligence department. The enlisted and junior officers snapped to attention when she entered the room. There she learned that the Russy mages were being taken from their numerous slave labor gulags and assembled together in one of their western gulags, and former prisoners agreed that their expectations would not be for rehabilitation, but extermination as a group. A rough estimate is that there are maybe 6,000 of them still alive, perhaps 3,000 of whom might be able to someday again function as mages, the weaker ones having long ago been worked or starved to death. The Gulag Dzerzenki, likely chosen as near a junction of rail lines. It is thought to also hold a number of Imperial soldiers as prisoners, whose backgrounds and conditions are unknown.

This is the great majority of the western Russy mages, intelligence continued. We have little or no information on the eastern mages, their numbers, abilities, or if they are included in the rehabilitation.

That night, before sleeping, Tanya pondered whether making a strike on that gulag and killing them all was the best course of action, likely the most humane thing for all of them. But before she could have another thought, Being X intervened.

"You are indeed a creature of war and destruction, and have yet to develop any appreciable faith despite my efforts. So I have decided that to improve this situation, I will offer you some good grace in exchange for good works." "What are you talking about?," asked Tanya.

"The people of that nation you are turning against hold deep and abiding faith, yet they are ruled over by savage, faithless monsters who oppress them terribly. Were you to tear down those leaders to allow the installation of more righteous ones, I might be inclined to relieve you of your damnation. No easy labor, of course."

"You want me to overthrow the government of Russy?", Tanya almost screamed. But Being X had already left before she let out an impressive string of curses and invectives directed at him.

Waking up still angry the next morning, she made her way to the offices of the Imperial Railway Service, to see Lieutenant Colonel Ugar. Slaughtering the Russy mages was no longer being considered. Instead she was formulating a scheme to steal most of them, which would do much to declaw the communists and strengthen the Empire. And for that she would need expert help.

Ugar was very thoughtful in his analysis. Because neither the trains nor the train tracks between Russy and the Empire were compatible, or even near to each other, some 6,000 people would have to be loaded on a long Russy train, taken to a destination where a fleet of trucks waited, unloaded and reloaded, then taken to and loaded on an Empire train to go to their final destination. They would be desperate for blankets, water and food. And all that time, the Russy military and police would be trying to stop them, with aircraft and ground vehicles. There would have to be a major distraction for us to have a chance.

Tanya remembered that several miles away from the gulag on the maps she had seen at intelligence, she noted a petroleum depot and a fighter airbase. That would be perfect. "But where do we get our hands on a Russy train?", Tanya asked Ugar. It would probably best to grab one at this station, he said, indicating it on the map, after it has been unloaded and refueled. Boxcars could hold more people, but in cold weather, passenger cars are more comfortable and hold almost as many.

Tanya did her homework before presenting her proposal to General Zettour, and went so far as to prepare graphic aids, mostly unknown in the Empire, but common practice in boardrooms in her time. However, she thought in retrospect that she might have done too good a job, as it gave so much more grist for the mill of his formidable mind that he began to stray off point looking for exploits. However, he had the discipline to suggest half a dozen very good ideas that could be prearranged.

However, the best laid plans often go awry. The expendable gliders would first drop scouts of the gulag, then the railroad team, and finally Tanya, to create the distraction, due to her speed and firepower. The first two drops had no problems, and at first she didn't think so either, quickly locating the massive POL dump. However, only half of the steel drums contained fuel, the other half had, to her horror, chemical weapons, perhaps a hundred thousand drums total. So after thoroughly recording this, she sought out and found a small, sealed container, then punched a small hole in the bottom of a stacked drum. The liquid weapon oozed out of the hole, a persistent agent like thick motor oil, and after catching an adequate amount she carefully sealed the container. For the intelligence department, this was worth a ten thousand times its weight in gold.

Then Tanya saw an exploit. The POL drums were higher than the chemical weapons drums, so if punctured, their fuel would flow between them, creating a great opportunity for incineration. Her machine gun punctured many holes and the fuel flowed. Then she left there are high speed and went to maximum range for a very powerful long range spell. The explosion was magnificent, but she had no intent to hang around in case the wind shifted and blew the extremely lethal smoke in her direction.

The fighter airbase was hopelessly forfeit, as was anyone within miles of the depot. Now all she had to do was to find her new train. It didn't take long to find, as it was barreling along at high speed, and according to Captain Weiss, acting as the engineer, it was the luxury personal armored train of none other than Chairman Josef. On top it has a turret with a 4.2 inch gun and plenty of ammo.

"Judging from how many cars it has, he likes to bring along his entire staff and a brigade or two of bodyguards and secret police." And the rations to feed them, added Weiss.

Soon they had arrived at the Gulag Dzerzenki, they were greeted by a grinning, if bloody Visha, who explained that she and Lieutenant Neumann noted that there weren't very many guards there, so they decided to take them out. Then while he kept watch, she went from barracks to barracks explaining in Russy to the captive mages that they were from the Empire, and here to rescue them. She was very glad that she had been refreshing her language skills. The prisoners were enthusiastic about leaving alive and so were being loaded aboard the train.

Lieutenant Neumann was anything but happy. He wanted to see the commander at once, because he had found the captive soldiers of the Empire. They had been tortured, maimed and starved. Neumann then ordered a subordinate to bring out the captive Gulag Dzerzenki commander. He immediately lashed out at Tanya, screaming foul Russy language and curses and asserting his rank and superiority. Tanya issued an order that the camp commander should not be harmed, but taken with them. Then to make her point, she felt she gave off her most terrifying grin, then noticed that no one was staring at her, but instead looking over her and shuddering. She turned around to see the bloody Visha had exactly the same grin on her face, and with wild, psychotic eyes.

For once Tanya felt the cold fear that others must have felt around her and resolved to be more judicious about her use of facial expressions in the future.

It took a long time to load up all the prisoners and get the train moving again. Only when they were almost to the truck rally point did word come in of approaching fighter aircraft. The next airbase was a long way away, so they must have pushed their engines to their limits and burned fuel like there was no tomorrow. Not knowing they were running headlong into a defensive screen of a battalion of elite mages at higher altitude. They were short lived, except for one who parachuted and was taken captive.

The mages followed the trucks all the way to the Imperial trains, before turning back to monitor the border. Before leaving Tanya asked Captain Weiss the rhetorical question of what would happen if that train was set in reverse at full speed, with all those munitions on board? Afterwards it was noted that it made it all the way back to the rail yard before fouling things up terribly for months.

With the encouragement of General Zettour, the Imperial Railway Service had laid out an amazing banquet of good food for the Russy mage prisoners, and those Imperial soldiers able to eat. But what they did could not be described as feasting or gorging, but as "sin-eating", according to Tanya, consuming the sins of all those soldiers who had saved them. Her soldiers present spoke long after of her profound spirituality.

The busiest person there was Visha, doing her level best to reassure the Russy mages that they were indeed safe, would not be abandoned or destitute, and supported by the Empire as citizens, not slaves. After the feast and using warm baths set up for them, and putting on clean clothes, some of them slept for days. The Empire's doctors insisted they get full medical and dental exams, and they did find some serious latent health problems that were then fixed. At least 20 of them could be labeled as top tier mages.

Visha's efforts were a huge success, as even without being asked, more and more of the Russy mages began volunteering for Imperial military service. Their numbers doubled when one revealed that he was an ordained Russy priest as well, whose church had been razed and his congregants murdered, only surviving because he was a mage. He offered to minister to others of as their military chaplain, which raised their morale considerably.

However, the sheer number of Russy mages created a problem itself. There was no way the Imperial army could accept such a large number of foreign mages in its ranks, or even in their own giant unit in the Empire. But once again, Tanya von Degurechaff provided to the general staff a brilliant, novel solution to many problems, all at once. She had already proposed the creation of a combined arms _Kampfgruppe, a task force centered around mages, but now wanted to innovate further, by demonstrating that a Kampfgruppe is "scalable" and can be enlarged by several factors. But with an added element._

_The first Mage Combined Arms Foreign Legion Division. With a core of 2900 combat mages, 500 support and reconnaissance mages, organic artillery, armor, mechanized infantry, close air support, a battalion of combat engineers and an antitank company. It would not be stationed in the Empire, but off the coast of colonial East Afria, on the island of Mazotte. Everything about it would be of the highest level of classification, a secret elite heavy brigade, though organizationally a division, of immense combat power. _

_It would be able to respond to any attack on the Empire with a second front counterattack quickly and with overwhelming force. Its heavy equipment would be moved by the navy, its mages carried and dropped by light aircraft, and its medium equipment carried by new heavy lift aircraft, soon to be produced. In a private deal with the navy, to pay her back for all she had done for them, they made an extraordinary commission with their top ship builder to produce a pair of giant submarines, with a slew of design improvements she specified, capable of carrying a great amount of cargo and personnel. They were so impressed that they forgot their puzzlement at the odd names she chose for them, the Yamato and the Musashi. _

_Since they had to change something, the general staff replaced the engineer battalion with a worker battalion of military prisoners, as engineers were still at a premium on the active front lines._

_First of all, Tanya hoped that by doing things this way, it would allow the diplomatic tension directed at her to dissipate. Second she knew that it would give her plenty of time to train the Russy mages up to her standards, and to train the other combined arms of the division to work hand and glove with each other. And not to irritate the army or navy at the same time. And third, when ordered to engage by the general staff, her division would rattle the enemy down to its core, much like the 203rd had done, but at ten or a hundred times the scale._

Lieutenant Colonel Rerugen was dazzled by the scheme. It was such a radical departure from everything he knew about military organization that he was, he had to be, very dubious. Only when Lt Colonel Tanya arranged, with the help of an immense bribe, a massive training maneuver in an isolated part of the East Afria colony with three first class colonial divisions under strict orders to do everything strictly by current doctrine, were Lt Colonel Rerugen's eyes opened. It was an absolute rout. Those three divisions would have been annihilated, with her division not breaking a sweat. And Tanya didn't even use her simulated trump cards, Doctor Schugel's "ultimate weapons", tools horrifying enough so that if she had to use them, she would want no witnesses.

Rerugen's report was classified at the highest level of security, hand delivery only, receipt by signature. It became the blueprint for the eventual reorganization of the army at brigade, division, corps, army, army group, and theater levels. And while the general staff were willing to promote Tanya to brigadier or even major general after reading it, she insisted on no promotion higher than Colonel.

"Colonels are what runs the army. Generals have to contend with politicians, argue over budgets, attend endless cocktail parties, lunches and teas." Her situation now was at a critical and precarious juncture. To become a general now would leave her powerless and covered in steak sauce in the lion's den of Berun. The last place she wanted to be.

There were some in the general staff who were either compelled to tinker with her plans, perhaps to create a flaw in her armor that could be used to undermine her, or to add their own fingerprint to the plan for self promotion. And this was the case with rejecting her request for an engineer battalion, and substituting what was considered a somewhat useless drain, a worker battalion of military criminal convicts. But Tanya had other ideas.

German Combat Engineers, Pioneers, were woefully underdeveloped in the Empire, mostly associated with trench digging, pillbox construction, and other low skilled work. But she needed a highly skilled, mobile, and effective combat engineer battalion, though in retrospect she pondered that a brigade would have been better, even if overkill for her needs.

She poured over the convicts personnel files, and found that most had been convicted of foolish crimes like drunkenness, moral turpitude, petty theft and things like that. Two of them, out of 550, were obviously spies or political officers, so she made a special effort to turn them in her favor. But from there she had to recreate their morale from scratch to make them top notch Pioneers. A first step in doing so was to offer a full pardon and restoration for those who demonstrated good performance over time.

This organization included Combat Pioneer Troops, Construction Troops, Railway Troops, and Technical Troops. They were first and foremost to be assault troops, and construction workers second. But then Tanya made some modern changes to their task organization, by giving them an organizational structure with a hundred Russian combat support mages, and a mechanized rapid bridging unit.

To unify them more with the division, she created considerable overlap with the mechanized infantry, and with some pure wit and maliciousness, gave them both new "asphalt" uniforms she had specially made, with only her knowing that back on her world, they were uniquely symbolic of the Waffen SS.

Her reconnaissance people were kept very busy in the East Afria colony, but because of its great secrecy, her island had become the top espionage target of the world powers, and spies flooded into the colony looking for information or even transport to the island. So her people had become top notch at counterintelligence. Likewise, rather unexpectedly, mercenaries began showing up in the colony, perhaps with the hope of getting a piece of the action, or at least diving where the next great and small fights were going to be.

In retrospect, she had to thank the Russy Federation both for giving her a huge number of quality mages, but also the time to get her Foreign Legion ordered. This was by dint of her discovery, and recording, and destruction, of their highly illegal chemical weapons depot. It had created an effective pause or armistice in the wars around the world and close to a year of diplomatic debate and haggling to produce treaties against their use. Granted, every nation was using that pause to rebuild and reinforce their military, and also to surreptitiously build up their own stocks of chemical munitions.

But all too soon, Tanya realized that when this pause had ended, the wars would continue with renewed ferocity. So for once she decided to get a jump on things, and put her Foreign Legion through its paces, to make sure it functioned as an effective whole. A forward attack against the Russy Federation was out of the question, so instead she figured an attack from the rear would rattle them.

This meant paying a visit to the Akitsushima Dominion, or as she thought of it, Japan.

They, in the recent past, had spats with the Russy Federation, and still regarded them as enemies, so with her understanding of Japanese culture and history, she hoped both to cultivate a powerful ally, and to steer its extremely powerful nationalistic ambitions in less futile ways, and to severely cripple those of the Russy communists, opening a major second front for Russy, to reduce the pressure on the Empire.

After a brief consultation with the general staff in Berun, she made a roundabout effort to achieve an introduction to the highest levels of the Dominion government and military in a way that would be irresistible to them. Instead of meeting with their powerful leaders, she requested an enigmatic meeting with a seemingly ordinary Akitsushima Rear Admiral, in a lesser and infrequently used port away from the attention of the military or citizenry. Perplexed as to why a decorated officer of the Empire wished to meet with him for an entire week, Admiral Yamatoro, with the permission of his superiors and their foreign office, agreed.

He was utterly taken aback, expecting a blue water ship and a senior military man, to instead be greeted by a young, blond girl, in a ship's longboat pulled by eight sailors with oars. She then greeted him in formal Japanese, and asked him aboard. He was beyond speechless, and agreed. Nothing could have prepared him in any way for the surfacing of the Musashi, 400 feet in length, his mouth agape and staring. Then with a proper naval welcome, she asked him aboard.

Ushered in to the Captain's stateroom, Admiral Yamatoro paused in admiration, as the Empire's navy had spared no expense with the décor, either. Fortunately, while neither man spoke the others language, Yamatoro spoke a bit of English to express his awe, learned as a student in the Unified States years before, and the Captain responded, speaking some English himself, from time he had spent in the Commonwealth.

But before they could say much, Tanya, who had changed to her dress uniform with all its decorations, made her entry. The Captain came to attention and saluted, briskly. Yamatoro didn't even recognize most of her combat decorations, and strained to remember the rank structure in the Empire.

Commonwealth insignia would have been much easier, as the Dominion's navy was closely modeled on theirs in every regard. However, Tanya was all business. The first thing she did was order a full dinner and drinks from the well stocked mess, to eat while talking business. By the end of the evening, Yamatoro was utterly exhausted. This was the pattern every day of that week.

She was courteous enough to have the entire week written down, in Japanese, with maps, for him to take home to his military headquarters. It outlined most of their current operational plans, and told them what would work, what wouldn't and why. And she included a scheme that would turn a major operation the Dominion had planned into the largest massacre of Russy forces imaginable, a slaughter off the scale of war.

On her world, Japan had successfully taken Manchuria, which was only wrestled away with Soviet armies totaling one and a half million men, at the end of the war, against Japanese forces half that number, in a gigantic multi front pincer maneuver. Under her plan, this would happen sooner, and those Russy forces would be annihilated.

Near the end, she said she that just by itself, that it was unlikely what she had explained was believable, so to drive her point home she intended to make the Musashi and its plans a gift to the Dominion's navy, so that while its army was capturing Manchukuo, their name for Manchuria, their naval yards would be busy building submarines and improved surface ships. And she and the crew of the Musashi would return home via a different submarine, and later return to the Dominion when the time was right, both by submarine and surface ships.

She then gave him a list of the critical officers in their military, that he should personally engage with them and show them the plan.

Once the Dominion army was in place in Manchukuo, she would return with her Foreign Legion and lure perhaps 200 Russy divisions into obliteration at the hands of the Dominion. When they know I have arrived in Manchukuo, they will come in their multitudes, and you will be ready for them.

When Admiral Yamatoro was returned to the dock, after a very close inspection of the Musashi, and reviewed the plan for the Musashi to park at their largest shipyard, and the crew to disembark before heading out to sea on a larger surface ship which would rendezvous with the Yamato, he had to shake his head. Certainly their intelligence branch would assume their operational branch had been totally compromised, but there was so much information given to them that was not in their plans, that even they must eventually see this as a gift from God himself.

He knew that for the next month, at least, his life was going to be hectic. But before that even started, he made a priority request to the intelligence branch to find out every bit of information about a Colonel Tanya von Degurechaff, and for their diplomatic corps a request to establish extensive diplomatic contacts with the Empire as soon as possible.

By the time her submarine had again docked at _Mazotte, the Russy were again planning aggression. Imperial intelligence had noted the incredible incompetence of those Russy officers selected for their political connections instead of military prowess. Though vastly outnumbered by the Russy, the Imperial forces using Tanya's combined arms organization were running circles around them._

_The biggest enemy advantage was with massed artillery and aircraft, which meant the Imperial mages had become expert in anti-artillery and anti-aircraft operations. On the ground the Russy used an insane tactic of sending in unescorted tanks, that were opened up like rotten fruit by Tanya's anti-tank companies idea. Then after their tanks had been brutalized, they would order their withdrawal, and send in unescorted infantry in human wave attacks. Against water cooled, belt fed machine guns._

_After a pause they would do it all again. In practice, in a lull, the anti-tank gunners would grab several rockets and a launch tube, and run forward to jump in shell holes. Then the tanks would come, be punished, and pull back. Following that there was a pause and the anti-tank gunners would run back to their lines. Then the enemy human wave attacks would come. It was madness worse than the Rhine theater._

_Even at a rate of 100 to 1 or two killed, it was starting to erode the Empire. So Tanya's plan, of pulling most of the Russy army east to conquer lands taken by the Akitsushima Dominion was looked at with favor. Yet her return to the Dominion was next to impossible to be done in a discreet manner. This in a way was part of the plan, and it worked, because in the weeks leading up to her arrival, Dominion counterintelligence had captured dozens of Russy spies, saboteurs and assassins. Russy knew who she was, and were deeply hateful of her._

_The conquest of Manchukuo was generally uneventful, and yet this peaceful occupation was very, very busy. Tanya was even more impressive to the Dominion general staff than she had been to that of the Empire. Her familiarity with the strongest parts of their culture was mythical, and all coming from a young, blond foreign girl. She indirectly, but unmistakably referred to the actions of their great historical heroes to justify her plans. And the entire time, Admiral Yamatoro was present, drinking it all in and taking copious notes._

_The best way her plan could be described was to channelize the Russy forces into "valleys of the shadow of death". Protected from air attack and Russy artillery by her legion, the enemy infantry were to be forced to traverse narrow valleys, ringed by Dominion artillery. In some cases, drums of a thickened mix of kerosene and gasoline were to be detonated above them. Tanya was glad to even give a name to this last, which they had never heard before. "Napalm", she said. "Tamaya!", she said to the puzzled looks on their faces, before with some horror they realized what she was talking about._

_She had underestimated how much Chairman Josef wanted to destroy her, destroy the Dominion forces in Manchukuo and claim that land for itself. She had estimated he would send 200 divisions, but he sent 300, though many were little more than conscripts with pointed sticks and refugees from one of his famines. After running out of shells, the Dominion asked Tanya's legion to take out the remaining concentrations, which they did. Thus her combined arms legion had a baptism of fire as one sided as her 203rd mage companies attack on the Principality of Dacia. As the cold, dry winter of Manchukuo turned into the hot, monsoon rain summer, large parts of its border area became uninhabitable from the stench._

_The Russy army was so depleted that it had no choice but to reach an armistice with the Empire, which meant the Commonwealth and the Unified States were all that remained of its former enemies._

_For Tanya's part, she could now spend much of her time on her island of Mazotte, with rare forays into Afria, mostly to keep the peace by putting down some revolutionaries while training her legion. But she was careful not to neglect Berun for too long, not knowing what mischief they might make. Her suspicions were confirmed when she was summoned to the office of General Rudersdorf._

_"__Intelligence reports indicate that the Unified States is constructing an extremely destructive weapon, with which it hopes to dominate the world. It is suspected that with a single use of this weapon, an entire city could be wiped out. We need to assess this threat and act accordingly. However, our intelligence resources in the Unified States are stretched thin. In addition, the security level of their suspected facility is such that only top tier mages might penetrate it."_

_Of course, Tanya knew exactly what he was talking about._

_Rudersdorf also knew of her submarine, the Yamato, and though he sorely regretted the loss of the Musashi to the Dominion, he understood that the gift had not only cemented diplomatic ties between the two nations, but also in doing so it had resulted in the crippling of the Russy Federation, so was definitely worth the price._

_"__The Commonwealth, and likely the Unified States, keep our docks under continual surveillance, but your submarine can go to and from your island at will with no one the wiser. And it can also stay submerged the entire journey. For this reason, we request that you assemble a commando team to infiltrate the Unified States, seek out this weapons facility, evaluate the threat of this weapon, and if necessary, to take appropriate action to destroy it."_

_For the next several weeks, Tanya became a fixture in a very secure area within the Empire's intelligence branch, so much so that they soon built a special wing to their headquarters and assigned her a permanent detachment. She became very upset on learning that previously a commando team had been sent to the Unified States on a similar mission, had fouled up terribly, been caught and secretly tried and executed. So her next extended stay was at the new, very elaborate embassy of the Akitsushima Dominion, where she was met and greeted with reverential awe._

_On hearing of her arrival at their embassy back in the Dominion, Admiral Yamatoro, now commander of all Dominion military forces, truly wished he could have seen his beloved friend, Tanya-sama, but knew that his appearance in the Empire would be a major problem, so he sent his three most trusted aides, representing the navy, army and air forces instead, with strict instructions to take exacting notes on absolutely everything she said._

_She had no intention of just waltzing in to the Unified States, maybe blowing up an installation and leaving. Instead she intended to create the most elaborate, intricate, and invasive intelligence operation ever made. While the Empire did not have extensive resources there, the Dominion had vast potential numbers, though the majority were just ethnically Akitsushimans who had migrated there for over a century with the intent to become citizens. So she figured that especially those who were first generation immigrants might be amenable to working in support of a peace organization between the two nations, especially since Tanya knew them to be seen as second class citizens by the majority._

_Meanwhile, the Empire had been busy, creating and filling comfortable dormitories for the very large numbers of widows and orphans created by the war, with a strong emphasis on learning the languages and accents of the Unified States, yet with a strong patriotic emphasis of the Empire and their love of its people. They were part of a plan of soft espionage, for the women to find and marry powerful and wealthy men, and they and their children to become part of the vital war industries and research of the Unified States._

_When the espionage network was first engaged, Tanya was still in Berun. A highly classified, but otherwise routine communique from the Commonwealth was intercepted, and a very different substitute was sent to an incompetent Commonwealth embassy official in the capital of the Unified States. The evening before he had been plied with drink and so fell asleep en route to his office, forgetting his briefcase in the public transportation. Just coincidentally, a newspaper reporter in the employ of the Empire happened to find in it what was soon notoriously called "The Flatman Communique."_

_It was directed at the government of the nation to the south of the Unified States, allegedly from the Commonwealth foreign office, saying that they should encourage the Unified States to fight the Empire, and once they had sent their military to do so, leaving them weakened, the Commonwealth would support their military invasion and recapture of the western lands of the Unified States that had been taken from that country long before._

_After it blew up into a major scandal, it did not help Deputy Ambassador Flatman that his briefcase was also filled with salacious, and generally accurate, stories of sexual scandals and bribery of Unified States government officials known to Commonwealth intelligence, which were also published. Tragically, Flatman soon perished en route back to the Commonwealth in a smaller aircraft, by opening a door and leaping to his doom over the ocean. "Doing the honorable thing", it said in the Commonwealth newspapers, not noting that he likely had help._

_What wasn't published by the reporter was a far more serious memo, documenting allegations of widespread infiltration of the Unified States government by Russy agents and communist sympathizers. For this, Tanya rewarded the reporter with a secret commendation from the Empire and a stipend in addition to his normal pay, with a request to pursue this information at many levels._

_By far, Tanya's most brilliant intelligence coup was discovering secret plans of the Unified States to wipe out the Dominion's aircraft carrier and battleship surface fleet in a sneak attack. When they heard of this, Admiral Yamatoro's aides at their embassy in the Empire were positively twitching with rage._

_When Yamatoro read Tanya's plans for dealing with this, his spasms of undignified laughter were heard through much of his headquarters. And then with ice cold seriousness, he assembled his entire command staff._

_Based on programmed intelligence fed to them by the Dominion, the arrogant Unified States government and navy believed it had a golden opportunity to establish hegemony in the largest ocean adjacent to their shores, by obliterating most of the warships of the Dominion in a great sneak attack in Dominion waters, not even bothering to declare war first. This was because every bit of intelligence they could gather indicated that almost all of the Dominion fleet would be as a group traversing a chain of islands where they would be sitting ducks to air and battleship attack. But in turn, the US carrier and battleship approach would have to be constrained, not as widely spaced as they normally would be._

_Yet just before the Dominion fleet entered the death trap, they suddenly halted. On getting this report from their reconnaissance mages, the US fleet on the other side of the island chain halted as well. They next saw their mages being blown from the sky, and then they saw something that made them panic._

_As one, fifteen Yamato-class submarines surfaced around them. Without thinking, a destroyer Captain gave the order to escape, his ship soon running into a dense minefield full of outsized sea mines. As a courtesy, the nearest submarine deployed several large life rafts to rescue survivors._

_The Fleet Admiral of the Dominion submarines then broadcast on an open channel that the US ships were in a very restricted area of Dominion waters, and this had long been posted on international naval maps, and only after they had dropped all their weapons and aircraft overboard and had their large guns rendered safe, would they would be permitted to return home without further delay, but if they launched any aircraft or committed other acts of violence, they would all be immediately sunk._

_To drive the point home in a big way, very quickly an unheard of assembly of mages appeared over all the US ships: Tanya's large number of Imperial and Russian mages, their numbers augmented by a lot of highly motivated Imperial Marine mages, and the minority of Dominion mages; but since all were wearing the uniforms of Dominion mages, it appeared that the Dominion had more combat mages, five times as many, than the rest of the world combined._

_Aboard the Yamato, the sixteenth of the submarines, still submerged, Tanya was heard shouting out "Tora! Tora! (expletive) Tora!", to which a Dominion naval officer standing next to her said, "Tiger?" She replied, "It's just an expression of joy. Don't worry about it." However, including the curse word, it permanently entered the lexicon of the Dominion navy._

_Of course it took the US carriers a long time to bring up and drop into the water all those fighter aircraft, and for the battleships to bring up and dump their propellant charges and shells prior to mages dropping thermite charges down their closed breech tubes, and it was early evening before the respective fleets began their trips home. The largest naval battle of all time with only small arms fire._

_Dr. Adelheid von Schugel was indeed a mad genius. Tanya was mystified as to how he could have been the one in which Being X had invested such power. Every year now, the Empire's top secret missile program continued to grow beyond measure, restrained only by the number of workers he could obtain. She curled her lip at the thought he once expressed that even slaves would be enough to do the work he required, as long as they obeyed his demand to frequently pray in all the chapels and churches he had built._

_Yet his work continued unabated into other things as well, such as the "ultimate weapons" he had given to her to use, that truthfully she had been too afraid to use, at least until now. He had simply called them numbers one, two and three, from least to most powerful. After his description of number one, the weapon chosen to erase the entire giant weapons facility in the Unified States, and all that had to be done to "safely" use it, she was even more terrified than on her first flight aboard the now archaic V-1 rocket._

_"__Fortunately for you, the weapon will not use your mana, as it needs far more than you could possibly have. Some time ago I attempted to make an operational orb pre-loaded with far more mana than a person could have, that then would be fed directly into their computational crystal, but it was far too unstable."_

_Something even Dr. Schugel thinks is unstable?, thought Tanya._

_"__But then I realized that if it could not have a stable discharge, what would happen if the discharge would happen almost all at once? And this lead to the creation of Number one. You need to go to an optimal altitude of about 15,000 feet, in a thermal suit and with oxygen, perhaps 5 miles away from your target. Expect a kick from the weapon, so be prepared to immediately brake, then to go at maximum speed away from the target to the rendezvous point. Do not attempt to record the blast with your computational jewel, or it could damage it. A ground observational team will try to record it on film."_

_Tanya was speechless. But it had been explained to her that this was perhaps the most important mission of her career. For the Unified States to continue to make these weapons they would become by far the most dangerous power in the world, able to make itself an empire with just threats._

_After she had gone over every detail of the plan a hundred times, the actual execution seemed almost routine. Driven in an automobile by two men she had never met, both wearing suits, they stopped in a wooded area. She donned her thermal flight suit and operational orb, made sure she had her dark goggles, checked her bearings for the installation, which would be hard to miss even at that altitude and distance. Then she was handed the single use weapon that would fire number one._

_It was like an old musket, but with what looked like a drum magazine halfway down the length of the barrel, and a strange looking butt, that would fit against a large chest plate she was wearing. Then one of the men opened the breech, while the other brought up a box and a pair of tongs. From the box he lifted an ominous looking black ball and dropped it in the back of the weapon, then closed the breech._

_Without saying anything else, the two men saluted, but did not wait for a return salute, got in the car and sped away on the dirt road. Tanya swallowed hard and took off. For once she had been equipped with an altimeter and needed it. It seemed unusually difficult to judge by sight for once._

_On the far side of a mountain, two technicians were doing a routine sweep for mana signatures, but dismissed her signal as an equipment flaw, as it was too high, around 11,000 feet, heading straight up, and disappeared on the high end of their screens. Just a blip. After the event, neither of them even remembered it._

_She easily located the facility, that was suddenly illuminated by the morning summer sun. A clear day. She first put on her heavy goggles, then aligned her body so that when the gun butt pressed against the chest plate, by the sighting device it was aimed properly. Then she saw the single button she was to push and turned off the safety, re-sighted and pushed the button._

_And that is the last thing she remembered for ten or fifteen seconds. Flying backwards at high speed she came to rolling like a ball and it was very hard to stabilize herself. The gun had been knocked out of her hands, and was hanging by its single long strap, but her rolling had wrapped the strap around her. Her momentum was fierce, and she started braking hard. It was then she thought she saw an illusion of two suns, before she realized that the second sun was in fact her target. As black as her goggles were, she could see it as plain as day. Finally, she recovered her equanimity and checked her altimeter._

_She was at over 17,500 feet. She had to descend, and quickly, using a charm again altitude sickness._

_There was still oxygen in the tank. She very fortunately was on the far side of a mountain before the blast wave hit, as much of the forest on the other side was knocked down. So here she was, in the backwoods, finally finding a paved road that eventually had a useful road sign after a few miles. With a map she saw the rendezvous site and made haste to get there. Only when she had taken off her gear and put on civilian clothes did she realize that the skin on her face not covered by the goggles had serious first degree burns, even with a few blisters. There's never a medical mage around when you need one, she thought._

_Colonel Renfred, of the Nuclear Weapon Development Agency within the Unified States Army could not believe what he was reading. "You're saying the only traces of radioactive material found were of our making? Identical isotopes, identical chemistry, identical doping materials. Then what the hell caused that blast? Nuclear or chemical?"_

_"__The best that we can tell is neither. There was a mana signature that knocked out mana detection equipment over 50 miles away. But we have no explanation for any of it. Even if it was man made or a byproduct of our nuclear enrichment program. Whatever it was, the seismic effects are causing small earthquakes across the region. Had there been a major fault line with stored energy nearby it could have caused a second disaster."_

_"__Howsoever," said the Colonel. The top brass and the political leaders are in agreement that for the foreseeable future, the Unified States are out of the nuclear weapons business, likely for good._

_Colonel Tanya von Degurechaff's return to her island of Mazotte was greeted with rare military pomp and enthusiasm. Deputy Commander Lieutenant Colonel Weiss and her Adjutant, Major Serebryakov, had kept her Legion in top condition, along with her Russyan subordinate Captains and Lieutenants, who were all singularly loyal to her. When the opportunity presented itself, they had trained and improved the colonial divisions, upgrading them to combined arms forces superior to most of the divisions in the world, which could act as a strategic reserve either for the legion or for the Imperial Army._

_Tanya herself appeared in her colonial dress whites, sporting any number of medals not just from the Empire but also the Dominion. Fortunately, thanks to Visha, the remaining paperwork had been reduced to just a dozen essential pages. Reclining on a chaise lounge in more comfortable clothes in her private suite, Tanya found herself dozing off, more than ready for a well earned holiday._

_She awoke with a start to find Visha kissing her on the lips. "Colonel," she said, "I just wanted to thank you for being such a truly good person."_


	2. Chapter 2

Almost as soon as her unit had returned to their headquarters at the southeastern command, leaving the rest of the Dacian invasion to others, Tanya received a message from the general staff directing her to meet with several officials of the Empire's Foreign Office, which would require her presence for about a week. Directing Lieutenant Weiss to get the 203rd Battalion ready for redeployment, she was then driven to the regional government building, accompanied by Lieutenant Serebryakov.

Their briefing was to the point. The Dacian war had rattled the government of the Kingdom of Ildoa, which was peaceful and generally neutral, and also somewhat aligned to the Empire. But the speed of the war made them concerned about the Empire's future intentions. If the Empire was to become hostile to them, a good general had noted that it would take 25 divisions to conquer Ildoa, and 25 divisions to defend it later, making such an invasion irrational. As such, conflict was to be avoided for both their sakes. So at the request of their government, they wanted a diplomatic meeting at a large hunting lodge in the north of their country, in a beautiful Alpine mountainous region through which flowed the Isonzo River.

Tanya knew of the river as the scene of twelve or so enormous, horrific, but indecisive bloodbaths of battles in World War I on her world, in which the carnage between Italy and Austria was profound, crippling Italy for generations. Yet things were peaceful here, and she hoped to keep it that way.

Since this is a diplomatic venture, why invite me?, thought Tanya to herself. It soon became clear with the appearance of crown prince Umberto. One of the empire's diplomats filled her in. His highness, the king, has heard of your battlefield exploits, and is hoping that the prince, though ten years your senior, might demonstrate interest in you as a potential wife. The trouble is that the prince prefers men over women and girls, confided the diplomat, but the king is desperate for a grandchild.

Tanya took it all in at face value, and because the prince was well versed in military matters, they had much to discuss, especially once he realized that she had no intention of vying for his affections. He did, however, use his culinary staff to offer her some of the best of Ildoan cuisine, thinking of her as underfed. She did enjoy it, in moderation, but was far more interested in coffee and conversation with the prince. Lieutenant Serebryakov, on the other hand became a favorite of the staff, bubbling over with complements while feasting on anything and everything they produced with a seemingly unlimited appetite. Eventually, thinking better of the Lieutenant's health, that she not gain too much weight, Tanya asked the prince if the three of them could stroll the grounds while taking in the beauty of the countryside. The prince suggested that since it was a hunting lodge, perhaps they could go hunting, to which Tanya agreed.

The area was rich with game, and though they had superior hunting rifles, made for the royal family, Tanya and the prince collected volumes of military and political information from each other, the prince resolving to substantially improve the Ildoan diplomatic mission in Berun with an eye to creating much closer ties with its government.

Lieutenant Serebryakov had a different view, however, as her battlefield eyesight alerted her to the fact that at a great distance the hunting lodge was surrounded by menacing characters, likely snipers, spies or assassins. The prince accepted the information stoically, as assassins were a regular part of his life, but Tanya was less forgiving. With his permission, she borrowed one of his hunting rifles, a specially crafted Modello 1891 with premium larger caliber bullets, much higher quality than the typical military rifle and round. She killed two of the stalkers at almost twice the typical effective range, and the prince was so impressed that he gave her the rifle and a case of ammunition as a thank you. He later became known as the king who rebuilt the military of Ildoa from scratch.

After her abbreviated stay, she returned to her unit with a large bundle of the finest Ildoan coffee and chocolate. In return, she offered him some very valuable advice about future Ildoan conflicts with the Turkman Principalities, when Ildoa had decided to settle some colonies in the southern continent. She also suggested some cooperation between the two Afrian colonies, Imperial and Ildoan, for their mutual interests, which he thought was a grand idea.

Feldwebel (Sergeant Major) Joachim Held had known Tanya since she was an officer cadet, and thought of her as his most brilliant student, and after her promotion to Warrant Officer, as a close, personal friend. After hearing of her astounding deeds, he was one of the first to propose her receiving the Silver Wings Assault Badge. Later he thought of her as his personal military fan idol, and did much to encourage others, especially cadets, to see her as the ideal role model of an Imperial officer.

So once she had become a Major and Battalion Commander, he sent her a letter asking that if she had an idle day, the next time she was in the area, could she could come by the cadet academy and give a motivational speech to a room of cadets. To his great surprise, she had such a rare opportunity in the near future, so offered to stop by on a given evening after classes, if that was possible.

Captain Emil Grun was one of the worst rear echelon officers in the Imperial army. Incompetent, abusive, drunken, his officer evaluations should have been awful, but were always good, as his units hoped that with a good review and a promotion and transfer, they would be rid of him, as another unit would poach him away. In this manner he had become a second, then first lieutenant.

Unable to assign him to any useful role, though technically a mage, someone had the idea of placing him in a role common in the Russy Federation, but unknown in the Empire, that of political officer. In Rus, their purpose was to insure communist political conformity in the army. But this role for Grun was the opposite, to identify and inform on anyone with communist tendencies. For once he had found a role that he enjoyed, intimidating and hurting others.

His promotion to Captain, and his transfer to the cadet training corps came when, at a formal, family dinner hosted by his regimental commander, he got very drunk, jumped up on a table in full view of the commander and his wife, pulled down his pants, held up a large fish skeleton to his backside and said, "Look, everyone! I'm a mermaid!" It was later said by those in attendance that his transfer was expedited to spare the regimental commander from having to soil his hands by personally strangling him.

The training corps quickly realized that it was intended that he be dismissed from the army, and certainly not to involve him in teaching cadets. So he was put on duties like equipment inventory and other routine paperwork, duties which he shirked, but otherwise just hung out in the building trying to listen in on other people's conversations, hoping for incriminating information to emerge.

It was during this time that he learned that none other than the Argent, the White Silver, war hero extraordinaire, was going to make an appearance to speak to cadets. Were he to somehow besmirch her name by suggesting she was a communist, or otherwise tear her down, he imagined any number of foolish things, like his rapidly rising in the ranks while commanding a legion of political officers to get revenge on all those that had slighted him in the Imperial army, with even senior officers fearing his wrath. Wealth and power and vengeance, with a bare minimum of work. Just what he wanted.

The evening of her visit, Feldwebel Held had brought in the very best combat cadets across the branches at the academy, not just mages, but infantry, artillery, armored cavalry, and pioneers. And before Tanya's arrival had built their enthusiasm to a fever pitch. Just entering the room, she received a standing ovation from the assembled, with the exception of Captain Grun, standing quietly in the back, in a doorway recess, scowling.

Grun, who knew nothing of her heroics or reputation, curled his lip and sneered to himself that she must just be some high ranking perverted general or politician's mistress used in a propaganda fantasy. And these stupid cadets are believing all the nonsense she is telling them. Won't it be fun to call her out and cast her down, humiliating her in front of all these fools?, he said to himself.

She said that before coming here today, on small cards I wrote some leadership problems that happened to me. I will pass them out to you, and when I call on you, I would like those that got a card to read the problem, then tell us what you would do in that situation. Then I will tell you what I did.

Situations from the Rhine Front, from Dacia, from Norden, soon the cadets were enthralled. And the problems were not just for mages. These cadets, the future of the Imperial army, were making mental notes that would change the doctrinal course of the army for decades. But then, one of the students, who had been looking dour for a while, when asked to read his card, first prefaced it by admitting that he could imagine no way that the problem could be resolved.

He then read the problem. It involved prisoners of war, captured during a rapid critical mission deep behind enemy lines, with hundreds or thousands of lives at stake, that had to be carried out immediately. They could not be taken with on the mission, nor could any personnel be spared to take them to the rear, nor could they be left behind as they would give the alarm and ruin the mission.

The subdued cadets looked at each other and were in silent agreement that the prisoners would have to be killed. Tanya interjected that this was a situation with no easy resolution, no by the book solution, and each of them would have to examine similar situations, and make decisions based on their own ethical character and judgment, fully aware of the consequences if they chose wrong. And the room stayed silent for a minute, almost as if in prayer.

What better time for Captain Grun to loudly blurt out, "You can't ever kill prisoners! That is a war crime! Something only a war criminal or communist would do!"

Tanya quietly lowered her gaze, bowing her head slightly to look at her notes on the podium. Captain Grun marched down the center aisle of the classroom while continuing to berate her. He was oblivious to all the cadets staring at him, their eyes burning with hatred and contempt, teeth clenched in rage.

However, a few cadets in the back were not watching him, but Feldwebel Held, standing in the rear, deathly pale and trembling with rage. Many soldiers seeing a Sergeant Major so enraged, no matter the army, have been so frightened by such a sight that they almost lost continence or fainted in terror. He kept control, however, and quickly followed Captain Grun down the aisle, before taking him under the arm and dragging him out of the room, closing the door behind them.

After sending Captain Grun on his way with instructions not to return, or else, Feldwebel Held returned to the lecture hall and in front of the assembled and repeatedly apologized to Tanya. For her part, though her rage at Grun was just as bad as his, she had kept a calm face, accepted the Feldwebel's apology, then tried to lighten the mood in the hall with some success. She also threw in a small pitch, that the Feldwebel of the army are the masters of the enlisted ranks, and should always be respected and thought of as equal to or greater than senior Majors or Lieutenant Colonels in their competence, authority and ability.

After continuing to speak and again captivating the audiences attention, she ended the evening with another extended ovation, and students debated for weeks what she had said and her arguments in support, which were frequently broached to instructors during class time.

Within a week, enroute to her units next assignment, she received a letter from Feldwebel Held, telling her of the unfortunate demise of Captain Grun. The weekend after her speech to the cadets, the mage branch was conducting some safety line flight training, very similar in many ways to rappelling. A simple rope seat, a "Waldstatte seat" is tied around their waist and between their legs. Then a d-ring is put through the ropes on either hip. At the top point where it is to begin, safety personnel put a looped rope through the d-ring, so that if the rope leading down is tensed, the friction on the ring jumps and the person no longer descends.

Then at the bottom of the site, other safety people, hold the loose ends of the rope, so if the person slips, they just pull the ropes and their descent stops. For mages, the ropes are just a safety precaution for if they lose control in trying basic flight.

Without an invitation, Captain Grun invited himself not just to the training exercise, but to be a flight instructor and safety at the top of the imposing cliff. Feldwebel Held was with the bottom safety crew and watched in silent contempt while standing next to the cadet in charge of the bottom crew. A young red haired female mage, just a little older than Tanya was when she started, but far more timid, had been properly hooked up by the top safety crew. Next to her, unsafely standing on the edge was Captain Grun.

Without thinking, Grun just ran a line through his d-ring, without looping it. The cadet in charge of the bottom crew intensified his stare at the top safety crew. But they looked at each other then just shrugged. The cadet in charge was thinking whether to call a safety halt, when the girl went over the edge and panicked a bit. The ground safety crew immediately froze her descent. But then Captain Grun stupidly lunged at her.

Had he looped his rope, they could have stopped his descent. Had he used his mage ability he could have stopped his descent. But he hadn't flown in years, so he plummeted down onto the protruding rocks and mud below to his detriment, with a loud thud, before sinking into the now red mud.

The cadet in charge paused for a while, then said, "well, scheisse." Feldwebel Held also said nothing for a while, then just "scheisse." The assistant to the cadet in charge, that other cadets called his henchman, named Burt, just grunted. He was a mage, but he had the body of a weight lifter, so he chose to go into the infantry. Finally, after a long pause, the cadet in charge said, well, we must do something, so he ordered Burt to go get the medics. Burt looked disgusted, then pointed to himself and said me? To which the cadet in charge told him to get going.

He walked slowly away, at a shuffle, while mumbling, "I get all the scheisse jobs."

The Imperial army never again filled another position of political officer.

Eventually the young, red haired mage became a good combat mage officer, and was well respected by her subordinates, though she was a stickler for flight safety rules.

Tanya was hard at work in the paperwork of battalion organization, an endless flood of documents which Visha dealt with seemingly effortlessly. Reports, requisitions, personnel, commendations and administrative punishments, typically small, she thought gratefully. But because Visha had been sent on an extended task, she had to deal with it herself. Late in the morning, on a warm, sunny weekend, so thankfully most people were gone.

The duty officer, an otherwise undistinguished second Lieutenant, knocked on the door and when given permission to enter, approached Tanya and said that she had a visitor who was waiting in the duty office. She asked me to give you this card, presenting it to her. Tanya went rigid when she read its simple message, "Deus lo Vult."

After being told to wait a few minutes before escorting her to the office, Tanya armed herself in several ways, and was ready to spring into action when the knock on the door came again. "Enter", she said. Into the office walked a young girl. It took several moments of staring before Tanya realized that this girl was almost identical to her, except for wearing a civilian dress and having a crucifix around her neck.

The girl spoke. "My name is Tasya Degurechaff, and I believe I am your sister."

Realizing that the second Lieutenant was staring at the two of them in awe, Tanya dismissed him with a little extra authority in her voice. Composing herself, she offered her guest a seat. She continued to speak.

"I was left at an orphanage in the southern Empire, and there I stayed for years until discovered by a low rent criminal named Hermann Vassal, who realized I looked like your identical twin. Thinking to exploit the resemblance and your reputation, he hired a prostitute, and pretending to be a married couple, he adopted me. The similarity in our given names was ideal, and after a few months he had my last name changed to Degurechaff. I quickly realized he was a scoundrel, but I was not opposed to his scheme, having stolen money and eating being better than starving to death."

"Then one day, doing housework, two things happened. The first was that a dangerous criminal Hermann had stolen from years before caught up with him and killed him, right on our doorstep. And the second was, in utter panic that I was now abandoned by the only person I knew, afraid that I too might be killed, or be arrested for vagrancy, I was sobbing over his body and praying to God when I was suddenly filled with heat in my chest and I knew I had been given God's blessing."

At this, Tanya curled her lip.

"Filled with faith, I sought out some women religious and joined them, hoping to become a sister, if not a nun. And there I stayed, with an oath of poverty, chastity and obedience, and ministering to the sick and later the war wounded, after being taught how, and learning I had a great aptitude in healing magic."

"Every now and then I heard of your exploits, and of how much the soldiers I tended to adored The Ardent. Then while tending to some of the Imperial soldiers who had been wounded in Dacia, I caught a brief glimpse of you as you went by. And every now and then I still get other blessings unpredictably, and the last time, while heading into Berun to seek you out, I found that card in my pocket, so thought it was addressed to you from God."

"Yet the reason I sought you out was that I believe our appearances are not a coincidence, but that our mother gave birth to identical twins, and that we are sisters."

Tanya had been taking this all in, and on the spur of the moment decided to respond with an extended statement in Japanese. Before she finished, Tasya looked at her with a puzzled expression on her face, then apologized by saying she did not know the language that Tanya was using. Do you know any other languages?, asked Tanya. Only some Dacian I learned from the soldiers, she replied.

Tanya then decided to tell Tasya the sanitized version of her public life from her time in the orphanage in the north of the Empire. She then asked the obvious question, why had the two been put in different orphanages? No easy answer to that, but Tanya had some speculation, based on some idle reading she had once done back on Earth.

Both in early 20th Century Germany on Earth, and the Empire today, there had been a deep fascination with genetic theory as an early form of eugenics. That is, observing twins separated at birth and raised in different circumstances, to see what parts of their lives they shared in common, and what parts were unique to them and not their twin. Genetics was extremely complicated, so what little they knew was based on farmers intuition of the selective breeding of animals, so they were reliant on observation.

But there had been experiments, both in the Empire and the Unified States, mostly by idealistic religious cults in isolated communes, in the selective breeding of people, based on the experienced guesswork of the cult leader, using his knowledge of animal cross breeding. And at least one of these, in which adults were directed to make and raise children with adults other than their spouses, had resulted in superior children who later went on to become national leaders in many fields, after a mere four generations, which was how long the cult lasted until it broke up. Fortunate for them, as even by then their inbreeding had become dangerous.

In any event, Tanya suspected the hand of such blundering pseudo-science might be behind the origins of her and Tasya, who she was feeling more and more like she might actually be her sister. But then Tanya caught herself, and asked why she had suddenly stopped being so suspicious of this strange girl, and her normal feelings of mild paranoia and cynicism were lacking. So she asked Tasya a very important question: "How does your healing power manifest itself?" Admittedly, a blunt change in subject from what they had been talking about.

Tasya then apologized a little. "I am sorry. When I worked in a hospital with the war wounded, I gave off a strong aura of peace, relaxation, and psychological healing, which acted as a powerful adjuvant to the magical and physical healing being given to them. With use and subsequent blessings, it became so strong that I could consciously fill the entire building with it, so now I have to will it, to reduce its effects. If I become too focused in what I am doing it expands again. Fortunately, it uses very little mana, so doesn't exhaust me like doing magical healing on profound injuries on several different patients.

Becoming aware of this, Tanya was able to reignite a little of her suspicious paranoia, which made her more comfortable. So then she returned to the subject by saying, "I know an 'eccentric' scientist", using a euphemism to avoid scaring Tasya off, "who might have some connections in the scientific community to find out if we might have been part of one such experiment. His name is Adelheid von Schugel."

"Doctor Schugel!", said Tasya, "I know him well and he's one of my favorite people. I think of him like an uncle or close family."

"Eh?", said Tanya. Tasya continued, "I was hoping to visit him today as well. He should be back at his lab after morning mass, and we could both stop in and greet him." While not particularly enthusiastic about meeting the maniac Schugel on a voluntary basis, Tanya agreed that this was a special case, and would be seen as a business meeting, so it would be no problem to borrow the duty driver to take them there.

"Uncle Adelheid!", Tasya shouted enthusiastically, while skipping over to give Schugel a hug. "Tasya!", Schugel replied, "How is my favorite little girl?", he said, ignoring Tanya completely, and was acting like a sane, normal, doting grandfather. Then after some small talk, he reached over to his desk and picked up a strange looking, diamond shaped computational jewel. Initially green, when she put it on it began to change color, finally looking like an over bright gold light, bathing everything around her, in front and behind, in gold light, before settling down to a uniform gold color.

As had happened to Tanya when she first got her cursed computational jewel working, Tasya started to spontaneously recite a prayer, but in her case, it was heartfelt and one that reflected her genuine faith in God. Again, the gold light appeared, and while much more diffuse, it filled the entire aircraft hangar, even the places hidden in the shadows, before becoming invisible.

When things had again settled down, Tanya approached the pair, and when Dr. Schugel saw her, his features hardened, and he said, "What can I do for you, Major Degurechaff?", in his usual serious and stern voice.

"Doctor Schugel," said Tanya, putting extra emphasis on the word doctor, "we are here to ask you for some scientific advice." Schugel looked puzzled. "You and who else?", he asked, looking about. "Tasya and I", she replied. He looked even more puzzled. "Do you two know each other?"

Tasya then spoke, to ask Schugel if he thought she and Tanya looked like identical twins. "No, of course not", he replied, "you don't look anything like each other." And then he paused, looked confused again, and stared at the two of them together, his brain trying to resolve how the two girls before him looked like twins, when just before he thought they were completely different.

"Extraordinary!", he said, "You do look like sisters."

Tanya then explained the situation to him, and asked him to discover any experiments of separating identical twins at birth. He agreed to do so, with Tanya noting he made his promise to Tasya, not to her, a wide smile on his face. The two girls then left to get some dinner.

"Imagine that", he later said to himself. "Truly the hand of God at work, that at the same time, the Angel of the Danube and the Devil of the Rhine both met at my laboratory."

To his credit, Schugel was a determined, even dogged researcher when motivated, and he poured through the numerous studies and reports that had been published, until he finally found a passing mention of a private study. Cross referencing it, he was able to ascertain that it had been carried out by the physician of a noble family.

The eldest son and heir to the family fortune and his wife were very gifted with magic, and showed prospects in many ways. But during her pregnancy she went into early labor while her husband was away, delivered twin girls and died. Likewise, in his haste to return to her side, he was thrown from his horse and broke his neck. The second son of the family was of low character, and pondered whether to drown the two baby girls like unwanted puppies, instead deciding to give them up for adoption. It was the physician who took them to different orphanage, for his own curiosity. It did the second son no good, as within a year he as well had entered the larger life as a consequence of his bad choices.

Yet while all of this was persuasive, Schugel remained skeptical until he saw the wedding portrait of the eldest son and his wife. The two girls resemblance to their mother was unquestionable.

Though he was not known for his common sense, Schugel realized that the most the girls could get from this situation is their knowledge of each other, and a picture of their parents wedding portrait. Seeking to recover their estates and nobility would be futile, as the age of kings had passed, and the pursuit would cost them far more than they could hope to gain. In turn, both of them were the best in the world at what they did, be it war or healing, so it would just be a distraction.

Would they even want a sororal relationship? Could an angel and a devil coexist? He admitted to himself that he had no idea, but as long as he could trod the narrow middle ground between the two, the spiritual Tasya, and the "wolf of the steppes" Tanya, he felt he could learn much along the way, and maybe achieve the immortality promised by God.

From the girls point of view, each of them realized that they were the product of war, and that the risks to their lives, and the uncertainty were such that it would be unwise for their relationship to become publicly known, so it was best that apart from the uncommon meeting, they should limit it to just personal correspondence. However, if a just and lasting peace were to come about, it was good to have some family in the world.

Though Dacia had been mostly secured, there was concern that some foreign powers might create mischief along its eastern sea coast. Until a permanent unit could be established there, Tanya was asked to have her unit screen the coast for five days. As their headquarters, she and her unit would be staying at the Castle Corvinilor, a very beautiful castle fortification, high on top of a mountain, often above the cloud cover. A great place for mages to avoid ground detection when entering or leaving.

Their host for this was Leticia Tepes, a very wealthy countess who lived there. When they were to be formally introduced one evening, Tanya, Lt. Weiss and Visha were surprised to find that the countess, the owner of this magnificent castle, was a little girl, even younger than Tanya. Tanya's anime trope alarm went off in her head.

Fortunately, Lady Tepes broke the ice by asking Tanya's age. When told her age, she expressed interest in how Tanya became so highly decorated in such a short period of time, and said if Tanya didn't mind she would love to hear all about it. Tanya waited for the other shoe to drop.

"Me? I'm ten. Most of the time I'm getting tutored, and learning all the things I must do when I grow up." Tanya couldn't help but snicker silently, but this was noticed by the countess, who asked what was funny.

Tanya apologized, and explained that she had read many fiction stories where a young female noblewoman had actually been a powerful and dangerous being hundreds of years old, and that for some reason many of them used her family name as well. "Oh, like a vampire, you mean?" said the countess. Tanya was a bit surprised, but said yes.

"Oh, nothing so exciting. My family controlled the final leg of the northern Silk Road shipping over the Black Sea to and from the capital of what is now the Turkman Principalities, and spent much of their fortune in building this castle, which at the time was impregnable to Turkman forces, and impassable by coastal ships without our permission."

"Oh, I see. My apologies", said Tanya. "Think nothing of it," said the countess. "My family and our castle have been surrounded by such stories for a very long time. That's why the people in the region avoid the castle. Superstition." And then she said the unexpected. "We do have a vampire in our dungeon, however. He is not in very good shape, but if you'd like to see a real one, I'll ask one of my servants to show him to you in his cell."

Tanya and her lieutenants looked at each other in puzzlement. The next few days were kept busy directing the screening mission. The only event of moment was when an unidentified submarine showed up and was chased off by Imperial surface ships. After dinner, Tanya would retire to talk to countess Leticia in her study. Hypnotized by Tanya's tales of the war, she often expressed awe at the goings on in the rest of the world. But then the subject returned to the vampire in the dungeon.

"He was a prince and a knight that fought against the Turkmen in a bloody war, but something happened that made him curse God, and demand some means of defeating his enemies. So God made him a vampire."

Trying very hard to contain herself, Tanya was just livid at Being X, that this was just the sort of cruel mischief he would do. But at the same time she was sold on the idea of seeing this monster face to face, to see the fate of another victim of Being X. Countess Leticia explained that the servant would carry a large fire torch, as it would arouse the vampire, illuminate it, and if it attacked it would fend it off, though the bars on its cell were good enough. She doubted if ordinary bullets could kill it, but if they were imbued with the magic mages use, they might do so. Thus it would be better if their sidearms had such enhanced bullets.

The descent into the dungeon by the three officers and the servant was a lot further than expected. It was quite large, and as many could be forced into the same cell, it could hold hundreds or more. On the lower level there were fewer cells, and at last, a level with just one cell. The door to it was massive and covered with religious inscriptions and incantations. It took both the muscular servant and Lt. Weiss to shoulder it open. Once inside, the odor was incredibly foul, and Visha gagged. Tanya was focused on the dark cell, in the corner of which was the figure of a man. His clothes rotting off his body, he was mostly naked, and blind, with dark sockets where his eyes should have been.

Sensing the torch, he rose surprisingly smoothly and stood there for a second before lurching forward at the bars. Visha screamed and Lieutenant Weiss was so startled he fell backwards. Only Tanya stood her ground without wavering as the hideous man struggled at the bars, trying to reach through and grab them, while giving off bestial grunts and snarls. After watching this display for several seconds, Tanya very calmly asked him a question. "Do you want to die?"

His grunts and snarls stopped, he relaxed, and then gave off one long sad whine, much like a dog in agonizing pain. After a pause, Tanya pulled her sidearm and started to recite a very long prayer. The amount of magic being poured into her gun was more than either Lieutenant Weiss or Visha had ever seen. Typically it would result in a gigantic and devastating explosion which they both assumed would level the entire castle. But before they could react, Tanya fired, and to their great surprise it was like an ordinary gunshot. The bullet hit the vampire in the chest, and it just crumpled, inert. By all appearances, dead.

Tanya then spoke to the lieutenants and the servant, and said, let's go. After walking up a very long flight of stairs and brushing off the dust and cobwebs, Tanya went to see the countess, and told her simply that she had killed the vampire. Countess Leticia said "thank you", and wished Tanya and her unit the best on their return to the Empire.

The following evening, Countess Leticia descended the dungeon stairs, wearing oddly anachronistic but high quality clothing. She opened the great door to the last cell with a nudge from one hand, then gazed at the quickly decaying body on the floor of the cell. "Well, you imprisoned me here and I imprisoned you there. Now we are both free, and I, for one, intend to see the world."

As almost an afterthought, she said "Ironic. Imprisoned by the servant of God, and now freed by the Devil."

The Imperial General Staff was much like a fine tuned automobile engine. It was a place of exacting intellectualism, endless study of military history and theory, military law, technology and industry, economics, planning and so very much more.

General Rudersdorf remembered his own exacting training, how on Kris Kringle Nacht, after having worked around the clock for days to complete a detailed, multi-volume invasion plan assignment for the legendary chief of staff General Moktle the elder, solely as an intellectual exercise, he hoped that when accepted he could spend the holiday with his family. But he was rewarded by General Moktle with an even harder assignment, to be completed on an even shorter timetable.

It was then that he resolved that he would try to never push the General Staff engine so hard that it would burn out. That as individuals, even in trying times, they would be given some opportunity to be with their families, and that as a group, that they would be able to relax in an informal atmosphere, and speak to each other freely, within reason, at irregular intervals.

For this reason, he had selected a particular beer hall in Berun called "Der blaue Engel", that was built by a friend of his on his retirement from the army. He had even suggested to his friend that it include a large meeting room just for that purpose, away from the crowd and those that would listen to them talk, staffed solely with waiters who were former senior NCOs. Always a pragmatist, he also insured that agents from army counterintelligence frequented the public areas of the beer hall in case spies tried to gather information there, or other military personnel talked too freely after drinking too much.

After Tanya had attended one of these beer hall parties, but just sitting in the back sipping coffee while the men drank and talked, first about business and then on general subjects, she got an interesting idea.

What would liven this up is if there were a few musicians to play for a while. Or at least an upright piano, and maybe a singer. She had notions of karaoke, but quickly dismissed them, the idea of gravel voiced senior officers belting out popular music as unpleasant. While talking with one of the staff, a wounded vet named Corporal Schultze, he mentioned that he played piano, and hoped to become a composer some day and had written several short songs based on poems he had read.

Tanya, mostly thinking that he could serve as the piano player, asked him to play and sing some of his songs before the beer hall had opened for the day. He did several that were fairly ordinary, before he brought out one that Tanya actually recognized, to her surprise. In her old world, it cropped up every now and then in historical movies, and was still remembered after a century. It was called "Lili Marleen".

Tanya decided to make that song the centerpiece of her idea. Its lyrics were fairly ordinary, so she worked with Corporal Schultze to make them high powered. Dripping with sentimentality, tragedy, loving memories, and painful loneliness and longing for love and home, it was the thoughts of a soldier at the front, drenched in cold, mud and blood, fearful of living to the next day, and the thoughts of the woman who loved him, and pined for him in the cold night, illuminated only by a streetlight on a dark and empty street where they used to meet. Tanya thought of adding a verse or two of children missing their absent father, but decided that would be too much. But both she and the corporal thought it would be a hit with the General Staff.

The evening would begin with a trio of lower floor waitresses accompanied by the Corporal on piano, singing some older popular songs known to the General Staff officers, to give the evening a light and festive mood, along with some snack foods, beer and liquor. Then after relaxing, talking and drinking for a few hours, just before the scheduled ending of the event, Tanya, after much practice, would sing Lili Marleen. As such, the simple plan became a bit more complicated, but in a good way, when two of the other staff asked if they could join in, one with a muted trumpet and the other playing accordian, and all three of the men doing backup vocals. More practice.

On the given night, General Rudersdorf and the rest of the General Staff were truly looking forward to the party, as it had been grueling weeks of stress and hard work. He was pleased that Tanya had organized and volunteered some light entertainment for them all, even though she was soon to ship out to yet another war engagement, so it would be a while before they spoke again. He felt a deep, burning anguish whenever she had to leave, and fear that her next fight would be her last.

When the trio of waitresses sang, they were such a hit that there were several recommendations to the beer hall management right after that they should become a permanent act for the lower floor, which they did and became a big customer draw on performance nights. It worked as it should have for the upper floor and soon the beer, wine and liquor flowed freely. It was also inspirational, as several officers had good ideas for ongoing and future operations. There were also some heartfelt arguments about past events and tactics, which never seem to be resolved.

Feeling relaxed, but still a bit guilty, General Rudersdorf invited Tanya to sit next to him and asked the waiter to bring out a bottle of fine wine, with intent that for all her hard work, and heading off into battle again so soon, it would be a shame if she wouldn't have a glass of it as a reward. Knowing it would be almost insulting to refuse, Tanya agreed. The waiter produced a large glass, with a knowing glance at the General, who smiled back, and she knew that she had been set up a little. And the wine was indeed delicious. Though intending to sip it, soon she had downed the glass and she knew that she was pleasantly drunk. Feeling warm and giddy, she came to her senses realizing that it was about time for the closing act to begin. So giving her apologies to the table, she went over to the piano, where the NCOs were getting ready.

The noisy, crowded, smoke filled room became quiet as the instrumental introduction of the song began with the trumpet, accordion and piano. Then Tanya began singing, keeping her eyes closed to better remember the lyrics, tempo, and emotional context behind them. She thought the only problem during her performance was when, during a particularly emotional verse, he voice cracked slightly. Then, with the final verse the song ended. The room was totally silent.

Oh, heck, thought Tanya. Was I that bad? It took her eyes to adjust under the bright lights but in a dark room. And then she saw the faces of the audience. Senior Colonels and Generals, tears flowing down their cheeks, some quietly sobbing into handkerchiefs. Even General Rudersdorf looked devastated.

Tanya almost panicked. Can I be shot for humiliating general officers in public?

But then, someone applauded. A half second later the room exploded in applause. They were calling out Brava!, banging on their tables, cheering. Downstairs, people in the hall were wondering what the heck just happened. Within a few weeks, "Der blaue Engel" went from a beer hall to one of the top performance nightclubs in Berun, with 'A'-list acts, so ironically the General Staff had to relocate to a quieter venue.

Royalties for a studio recording of "Lili Marleen" made Corporal Schultze more than enough money to begin a long and illustrious career as a composer, both for stand alone works and later, movie soundtracks.

Tanya resolved to not drink wine again until she was older.


	3. Chapter 3

Anyone and everyone of importance in the Empire's armed forces either knew Tanya von Degurechaff, or knew of The Argent. But as important as a military is to a nation's well being, it is only part of the government. And as much as the military jealously held on to Tanya as theirs and theirs alone, other agencies were starting to see her as the "go to" person for exceedingly complicated and dangerous missions.

The intelligence and counterintelligence branches, the Empire's foreign office and the economics ministry all wanted to use her services. Because of her business acumen, far in advance of the economic theories of the day, she even had something of a cult following in the economics ministry. They now busied themselves tracking dozens of economic indicators she had taught and explained to them, that they had not before imagined, to the great benefit of the Imperial treasury, business and industry.

And when the economics ministry teamed up with the foreign office, they could apply a lot of pressure on the military. This was the case with the long simmering pot of problems that were Magna Rumeli and the Turkman Principalities. For all their faults, the old Sultanate of Magna Rumeli was steadfast in resisting political and military pressure from the Russy Federation, who had, even before the communists, dreamed of absorbing them into their sphere for their value as the crossroads of east and west, as well as for very old religious motivations.

So Russy tried to subvert and entice the restive minorities within the Sultanate. Domestically, their problems were even worse, as while the Sultan and his government were forward looking, their foundations were based in their religion and antiquated styles of government. But a new generation wanted a mostly secular government founded in reason and rationality, and hoped to overthrow the Sultan to achieve it.

Though militarily stretched so thin that the Russy Federation had to make peace with the Empire, they were still able to muster about a division of mostly secret police, military intelligence and border security to infiltrate the eastern reaches of the Sultanate to stir up the restive minorities within, since it was not part of that treaty. The reaction to this by the new generation of Rumelians was to become very aggressive towards these minorities within Magna Rumeli, as well as the Turkman Principalities, seen as inviting Russy involvement against their nation.

The father of the current Sultan, Mahmad VI, was a firm believer in modernizing his nation. He built railroads, highways, dams, and created a public education system which was not well received until he made it mandatory for all children despite their social standing. He used a large part of the national income to build his magnificent Dolmabache Palace, more modern and with more amenities than were used by royals in other nations. Gas lighting, electricity, and even its own theater. And plenty of places to hide from assassins and invaders, and niches for secret policemen, for he was also more than a little bit paranoid. The palace also had more traditional aspects, such as a large area for the Sultan's harem, but for the most part had the best modern design of any palace around.

For his part, his son brought in a fleet of automobiles, and had an aircraft strip and hangar nearby. And his diplomats were always on the lookout for new and better technologies. Perhaps his oddest innovation was in the nearby city where most would assume his servants lived. It had all the businesses of a city, and everything a city of that size needed, and otherwise looked very orderly. But every person who lived there, from its mayor to the street beggars was a spy. The logic was that the main road leading to the palace passed through the city, and outsiders would figure on using it as a base from which to operate. The level of surveillance was absolute.

There was a multitude of concerns in the Empire for the future of Magna Rumeli, as well as the Turkman Principalities. Ever increasing trade with Afria had to pass through the land route gateway of the Principalities, or hazard the rampant piracy of the much longer littoral, or coastal route. And recent events had magnified the flow of trade with the far east, especially the Akitsushima Dominion, through Magna Rumeli itself.

And the Empire wanted the infiltration by the Russy Federation stopped cold, not just its troublemaking division but those trying to persuade the new generation to embrace communism.

So that the Empire's foreign office, economics ministry, and the military could assess the situation, Colonel von Degurechaff, Lieutenant Colonel Weiss, and Major Serebryakov, accompanied by one of the most accomplished spies of the Empire, Margaret Zelle, were to travel as civilians to the capital of Magna Rumeli and were then to be invited as guests to the Dolmabache Palace, to have a business meeting with the Sultan and some of his advisers.

On their meeting with Agent Zelle, both Tanya and Visha were not particularly impressed, as she came off as rather average looking. But Lieutenant Colonel Weiss found it hard to contain himself, and was later chastized by Tanya for gawking like a teenage body. But he swore she just radiated sexual glamour of a kind he had never seen before.

For the purposes of this mission, Lieutenant Colonel Weiss would have the identity of the wealthy owner of a diamond concern in the Empire's East Afrian colony, Margaret Zelle would be his wife, and Tanya and Major Serebryakov would be their daughters. Only the Sultan was aware of their real identities. Lieutenant Colonel Weiss would present one of the Sultan's aides, a diamond expert, with several cut stones for the Sultan as a gift from the Emperor, after which the Sultan would excuse his aides to speak with his visitors in private.

The trickiest part would be that their diamonds, computational jewels, flight equipment and weapons would need to be sent in a diplomatic pouch to the Imperial embassy in the capital city, so in the times they were without they would be relatively defenseless. However, Agent Zelle was top notch in close combat, and had worked as an assassin, so would be their bodyguard.

Their flight to Byzantium, capital of Magna Rumeli, was not very eventful, other than Lieutenant Colonel Weiss becoming airsick. A very large and heavy luxury automobile, a V12 Pierce-Arrow from the embassy was sent to pick them up. Agent Zelle gave them a rundown on the vehicle. Made in the Unified States specifically for the Sultan, with modifications like armor plating, medium range radio and weapons compartments, if its tires were shot out it could ride on its rims for miles. Its powerful engine could accelerate faster than most vehicles and was strong enough to tow an armored car. In turn, the Sultan had gifted it to the Empire's embassy officially because it was last years' model, but practically to keep the Empire's ambassador from being assassinated.

Tanya was impressed by the ancient and modern look of Byzantium. The embassy driver noted they were being tailed by at least two cars occupied by new generation agents, recognizable because of their odd looking red hats. He looked at Agent Zelle but did not say anything, then she remarked that it was more important that they get to the embassy.

Instead of getting into a fight with those fools, Tanya said to herself.

The driver kept a running monologue as if he were a tourist guide, yet also explaining the complex politics of Magna Rumeli woven in seamlessly. Byzantium was still wholly the domain of the Sultan's forces, but the new generation was setting up its own shadow government in the second city of the realm further inland. He also let slip that his family were from an ethnic and religious minority and were afraid of persecution were the Sultan to be overthrown. He did not go into detail because by then they had arrived at the Empire's embassy and drove directly into its underground parking facility.

The ambassador and the embassy staff gave them the full VIP treatment, including a buffet far beyond their pay scale, including fine Black Sea caviar, vegetable and warm stuffed meat dolmas with tahini and other sauces, warm manti dumplings with garlic yogurt sauce, numerous cheeses, and sweet, sticky baklava for dessert. Having been informed of Tanya's fondness for coffee, they had regular, Ildoan espresso, the local brew and the local brew with cardamom spice, preferred in country. Lieutenant Colonel Weiss, Agent Zelle, and Major Serebryakov all ate heartily, but Tanya limited herself to some cheese and ordinary coffee. She noted later that the others all needed to afford themselves some seltzer powder for heartburn.

The next morning they had just left the embassy when they heard a loud explosion in the distance, which the driver was able to identify as having come from the area of an open market frequented by a religious minority, though he could not guess as to its origin or purpose. Otherwise the streets had the normal high volume of traffic for a business day, while they were enroute to the palace. He made it a point to stop off at the town of spies just long enough to buy some fruit, as a means to let the palace know they were soon to arrive.

Tanya had never seen such a grand palace. In past, the Russy Federation had several like this, but they were all razed by the Philistine communists, memories of a glorious and prosperous past they wanted forgotten, along with museums, art galleries, and libraries. But the quality and artistry of this place was impressive. Likewise, behind the scenes, Tanya was aware of recent technologies being put to good use. She almost giggled when she glanced through a doorway to see a ticker tape machine in operation with data from some stock market. They truly had to pass through a gauntlet of a busy part of the government to see the Sultan.

Finally, after an extended introduction under their fake personas, and Lieutenant Colonel Weiss passing the gift from the Emperor to the Sultan's aide, who stated to the Sultan that their quality and cut were magnificent, then the aides were excused to leave. After a brief pause, Tanya noted that the Sultan was positively leering at Agent Zelle, who in turn was both glancing at him seductively and blushing.

Tanya then got to the point, that the Empire was concerned for the well being of Magna Rumeli, as well as the Turkman Principalities, and that they had been sent there to, if possible, mitigate problems for the Sultan. In truth, said the Sultan, I have had the situation explained to me in depth by my most trusted friend and teacher, who was also my father's friend and teacher, and he has said that the best option for me, and my nation, is to abdicate, as these problems are intractable, and will certainly lead to the painful downfall and tragedy for my nation. However, those who will then take the reigns of power are ruffians, who seem to prefer chaos, violence and war to peaceful management with order and reason. At the same time, the Russy bear prowls around our door and has already nosed its way inside.

"Your friend and teacher seems unusually wise and honest," said Tanya. "Would you care to meet him?", said the Sultan. "Certainly," said Tanya. "Oddly enough," said the Sultan, "he lives in the part of the palace traditionally reserved for the harem. But I no longer keep a harem, as I no longer have an interest in women who are not particularly bright, but are lazy and complacent." Then he cast another wistful glance at Zelle, who looked away briefly. "So it is now where my friend and teacher lives, with his extensive library of books he has collected and those he has written. It still remains tradition that only the Sultan and trusted females can enter the harem, under severe penalty, and my subordinates are sticklers for tradition. But since nobody saw him enter, they cannot take against him for being there. And though he can leave at any time, he chooses to stay. Tanya was somewhat puzzled.

Before my father, Sultan Abdala Hamed II, built this palace, our friend and teacher lived in his own part of the old palace, and moved him here before designating the harem area as a harem, again to evade the rules. It was on his advice that my father began his program of modernizing our nation, and he provided ideas to help a few other strong rulers do the same. With this, the Sultan took out a strange looking key with which he opened the door to the harem.

Shelves of books. Stacks of books. Piles of very old scrolls. On a table she saw what looked like papyrus scrolls from the time of the Pharoahs, and even Aztec codices. Other tables had religious charts and small artifacts. Then from behind some shelves, Tanya heard "Good day! Do I have some visitors?", and out came a young man.

"Colonel," said Sultan Mahmad VI to Tanya, "Allow me to introduce you to Sabetay Sevi, my friend and teacher. He is over 330 years old."

"Pardon me for being so forward," said Sabetay to Tanya, "but have you also been blessed or cursed by God, or whatever it is that calls itself God? The expression on your face says yes. Well, let me tell you my story, and then if you feel like it, you can tell me yours."

A long time ago, I was a serious student of the mystical side of my faith, the Callabah, and I had something of a gift in finding the hidden meanings of things. Quite unintentionally I managed to piece together a secret name of God, and instantly found myself in that place out of space and time. You know where I mean, I gather. And I met who at the time I thought was God. It seems that he had been looking around for a spokesman to stimulate the masses to believe and pray more. And that he was going to bestow on me a blessing to help me do this.

The blessing was of astounding charisma. So I left this nation and went north, gathering those of my minority faith around me to the point that the vast majority could have been called my followers and embraced the new doctrines I had given them. This was a major problem in those societies in which they lived, because those of my faith utterly dominated several critical parts of their economies. Their leaders even briefly considered enslaving my people, hoping to force them to do the jobs they had done, before realizing that slaves wouldn't do such jobs.

The last major group of my faith lived here, in my home country, so I had to return here to make my rule absolute. But the Sultan who reigned here at the time was an interesting man. Officially, he was of a different faith, and was believed to be a righteous follower. But privately, he admitted to me that he was a resolute cynic, a scoffer and an atheist. He had spoken at length with some of my early followers, and from them had learned an accurate account which I had given them, of my meeting with God, which I later refined and embellished considerably to use as my story.

He was of the opinion that the being I had met was not God, if God actually exists, but some other powerful being, perhaps a djinn or a devil. However, he said, this is not the issue of the moment, that those of my official faith demand that I behead you; or I will be at risk for being beheaded myself. So how shall I deal with this situation? I envision one of two choices. Either you are said to have converted to their faith, and will be imprisoned in the palace until you die; or you can renounce God completely and become an atheist, and live in the palace for the rest of your life as my guest, though officially imprisoned here. With no religious obligations, and with access to all sorts of palace amenities, outside of my harem.

It still took a while and more arguments before Sabetay Sevi became an atheist. Perhaps out of bitterness by the God-being, most of his blessing was stripped away, and as one last insult, since he was trapped in the palace until he died, his beard was taken away as well as his last 20-30 years of maturity, so he looked like a callow youth. He was also cursed with, if not immortality, then with an unnaturally long life.

In retrospect, he truly felt that this first Sultan was his friend, and he mourned his passing. So he decided to stay on as teacher and friend to his descent. Since then he had raised them to be men of rationality and reason, and to shun beings that proclaim themself deities. But seeing the changes to the world, he estimated that the time of Sultans was ending, so had raised the last one to be somewhat fatalistic, and to be ready to flee when the revolution came.

Taking all this in, Tanya finally interjected by saying, "What if someone was to teach the leaders of the new generation how to rule?" Sabetay said that at least their leaders tended to be sensible, but many in their ranks lust for war and chaos. Currently they hope to slaughter the minorities of Magna Rumeli, as well as in the Turkman Principalities, so until they have tasted the bitter reality of war, they are beyond reason. This set Tanya to thinking.

Getting a recent map from Sabetay Sevi, Tanya pondered it for a while, then invited him and the Sultan, who had been quietly reading while the two of them talked, for some speculative talk. "There is a nation, the Commonwealth, that has been itching for a fight with the Empire for some time now. We suspect that they hope to make a major landing on the coast of the Principality of Dacia, so that their attack on the Empire, likely with another ally, will be on two fronts, perhaps three or four, if they also ally with the Rus."

"But to get to the coast of Dacia and back, they must pass by the Ispagna Collective, which should not present a problem, then the Ildoan islands, generally neutral for the time being, and the Magna Rumeli islands, not well defended, and its strait which can be very effectively defended. So the strait would be a strong bottleneck to them if Magna Rumeli reached a treaty agreement with the Empire."

"They do not believe that the Magna Rumelian army would present much of a threat to them were they to make a major landing to secure that entrance to the strait. From there they would move up the strait and even try to capture the capital of Magna Rumeli, both crushing the ally of the Empire and preventing the Imperial navy from using the strait against the Commonwealth landing in Dacia."

"So here is my proposition to you. Say we meet with the new generation leaders, and explain to them that they have four months of effective control over the military and some of the government, augmented by their young and ambitious future leaders to prepare a very effective but covert defense against a massive landing by Commonwealth and other forces at the mouth of the strait. They will need defenses against ships and submarines, logistics and much, much more. And if their planning and execution is well done, they will have learned how to rule and defended the nation, and the Sultan will bloodlessly cede power to them and go into exile.

When all the preparations are made, the Empire will make a show of the short visit of a few decorative brigades to celebrate the new treaty. At the same time, my unit, The First Mage Combined Arms Foreign Legion Division, that is unknown to most of the world, will covertly enter, wipe out the Russy secret police division trying to incite your minorities, and then establish air superiority over the area of the landing, after the new generation has had a taste of the modern battlefield.

"But where will the enemy attack?", asked the Sultan. "At a place you call 'Canakkale', but is known to the Commonwealth as 'Gallipoli'", replied Tanya.

Tanya has estimated six months in practical terms, the first two just to get the project started and to get advisers sent from the Empire. But it was accomplished in just over a month. Some of the new generation leaders remarked afterwards that their training was like getting a college degree in a month of intense study. Likewise the Sultan's military command was driven to completely relearn everything they thought they knew about war. The battle area was intensely mapped and prepped, even with subdued rail lines, and submarine nets and sea mines made sections of the strait impassable, so commercial shipping lanes were tightly policed.

For her part, Tanya's division had taken over a formerly abandoned village and rebuilt it to look normal. Someone could pass through it and not know it was brimming with weapons, had barns with tanks and artillery, bulldozers and bridging equipment, yet produced almost no mana signature. Only after they had lingered a while would visitors maybe realize that no children were in evidence. But no reason to do so, as it was just another ordinary village.

Ahead of schedule, back in the Empire the Intelligence ministry was carefully, even artistically, laying the groundwork for Commonwealth Intelligence to bite it all, hook, line and sinker. Hand crafted lies and half-truths, newspaper stories, and gently fanning the flames of aggression against the Empire. And soon the Commonwealth was running larger and larger landing exercises in preparation for an invasion.

Meanwhile, back in Dolmabache Palace, the Sultan and Sabetay Sevi were having more fun than they had in ages. Tanya made sure they had an active feed of all that was taking place. So when intelligence let it be known that a huge flotilla of Commonwealth warships laden with troops were enroute, they were already doing a victory dance.

In Londonium, Duke of Marlborough and First Lord of the Commonwealth Churbull was intensely covetous of the Empire's seemingly endless victories, and he wanted to hit them so hard, from so many directions, that it would cause their economy to collapse overnight. His impatience made him ignore the counsel of cooler heads, both outside and within his war cabinet. Convinced that Magna Rumeli was rotten to the core and crippled to the point of near collapse, he had issued orders that as soon as a beachhead was created in Gallipoli, that an airfield would be built, bombers quickly assembled, and firebombing of their capital city would commence.

Not just revenge for the massacre at Arene, but to show every other power what would happen to them if they had the temerity to align with the Empire. His view had become so distorted in his hatred for the Empire that he didn't even fret about war crimes, nor did he think that anyone else would, if the Empire was finally destroyed. His attitude could be summarized as, "Kill them all, and let the lawyers sort it out!"

Operatives for the Unified States did notice his increasingly erratic behavior, and on their advice, the US decided to scale back their contribution and focus instead their own independent action against the Empire. Of course if his scheme was a success, they would also be ready to exploit the situation.

When creating the Russy Federation, one of the few intelligent things they did was to create a balance of power between the three primary parts of the government. The communist party, the military and the secret police, the NKVD, made up what was called the "three legged stool". When one of the legs got too strong, the other two legs would gang up to cut it down to size, to balance the system.

What was more difficult was when one of the legs had been brutally cropped, in this case, the military, after their debacle in Manchukuo, with the loss of most of 300 divisions, leaving them so crippled that they could not defend their nation. It also made Loria, the head of the NKVD, the second most powerful man in the Federation. So to keep him out of trouble in Moskva, Chairman Joseph sent him forth across the land, to find those who were not good communists and to have them killed or enslaved or enlisted. With all the children he could rape and murder as a bonus, as long as he was reasonably discreet about it. Loria was truly happy, and saw it all as a reward.

The rather slap dash division of NKVD, military intelligence, and border guards did not get along particularly well. Sent into Magna Rumeli with the purpose of encouraging restless minorities to revolt against the government, all the NKVD could do well was to torture and murder so was not appreciated by these minorities. The military intelligence thought their purpose was to prepare a route for the military to invade, so they sabotaged what little infrastructure the people had, also breeding resentment. And the border guards were clueless, so did as little as possible. There was no real command structure other than a few political officers, Zampolits, who knew communist doctrine, but nothing about unit operations or leadership. And initiative among the ranks, or even to have NCOs, was forbidden.

So when reconnaisance people from Tanya's division showed up, the locals had no idea who they were, but if it would lead to the eradication of the Russy division, they were all for it. In a short time, the locals had regained their patriotism and appreciation for the Sultan, and were more than happy to help the "flying people".

So with the arrival of the Commonwealth invasion armada, the stage was set. In addition to a huge number of infantry, tanks, artillery, fighter aircraft and bombers, their navy had wisely brought minesweepers, if foolishly of the wrong kind, and one of the largest mage contingents in the world, mostly well trained, but untested in war. And they were waltzing into one of the largest defense-in-depth ambushes ever created, with at least ten times their number in battle hardened combat mages.

Tanya had long been suspicious of the ability of the Commonwealth to figure out the communications of the Empire, enough for its mage units sent to covertly assist their allies to be able to evade Imperial attacks, both on the ground and with its naval fleet. So with the permission of the Empire's military intelligence, she had implemented a double communications network. A false one using the current Imperial code structure, and a second one, of one use codes sent in the clear on lesser used international channels.

With most eyes focused on the landing at Canakkale, only the Russy high command, then Empire, the Sultan and several key new generation leaders and officers, were made aware of the disappearance of the infiltrator division, followed shortly thereafter by the extermination of seven Russy infantry and mech infantry division poised to invade over the border. This ended the animosity between the new generation and this ethnic and religious minority, preventing what had been on Tanya's old world a nasty genocide.

Meanwhile, Tanya's division moved with practiced efficiency in the direction of the landing. A considerable distance, their less needed ground units were expected to lag behind their air deployed fast mage units. Fastest of all were their forward observer mages, who with great hilarity noted that thinking they had little to do, the Commonwealth mages seemed to be practicing their "synchronized flying", or "drill and ceremonies in the sky", almost a sin in the eyes of hardened combat mages. For their part, long after the fact, the surviving Commonwealth mages said that they should have paid more attention to those far away mana detection positions, but they were so far away they just didn't want to be bothered.

The Commonwealth noted with disdain that there were some poorly constructed and obvious minefields, made with old style mines and emplaced perhaps decades before. And some of them had even been marked as such with signs. So it was decided to clear those mines in the easiest approach, creating a corridor for the men and equipment. From the Empire's perspective, in military parlance, this is called channelizing the enemy. In this case, so that they would travel through the densest parts of the kill zones created by the Magna Rumeli army, directed by new generation officers, themselves under the direction of Imperial advisors, working under Tanya's supervision.

Back in Berun, the general staff had constructed for them one of the most unusual war rooms ever made. Though the Empire was not officially participating in this battle, agent Margaret Zelle had a heavy company of Imperial spies providing detailed descriptions of the play by play, as well as watching things in both the capital and second city of Magna Rumeli, to counteract any efforts at sabotage, assassination or other mischief by Commonwealth agents and their embassy there.

Of all the international gaffes, declaring war after initiating war is regarded as the worst. First Lord Churbull, blinded by his ambition and hate, made this gaffe. After the debacle, he was retired to an estate in Coventry, to soon drown in a vat of whisky, as it was known that he preferred it to wine.

Tanya arrived at the head of a brigade of mages, to first perform a repeat of what had happened to the mages of the Unified States fleet, that is, wiping out those Commonwealth mages that were airborne with great speed, and then as the brigade obliterated the newly constructed airfield, fighters and bombers.  
The Elphinstine family were military prodigies. On land they were known as some of the worst, most incompetent field commanders the Commonwealth had ever produced But in naval command, they produced some of the most brilliant admirals of fleet combat ever seen as well. So it was no surprise that Fleet Admiral Georges St. Michael Elphinstine was aboard the flagship. By all accounts he was a great talent, and to his credit he went down with his ship, at the loss of all hands, which would have been the case except that he was detected while being ferried in his sinking longboat and was spirited away for a meeting with a few Imperial interrogation agents who happened to be in the area, who were soon joined by some others from Imperial naval intelligence. He was not abused in any way, and cooperated to spare his family embarrassment as a living prisoner instead of a dead hero, being rewarded with a new identity and a luxurious villa on what had formerly been known as the Francois Riviera.  
His fleet was considerably worse for wear, including the loss of submarines to nets, though they fared much better than the ground invasion forces, who every time they ventured from the beach were brutalized. Some ships had tried maneuvering out of range and had run into minefields, and several minesweepers were lost trying to clear a path. Without spotters on high ground, or mages, their artillery was worse than useless, though did manage to kill two dozen unfortunate Magna Rumeli soldiers by what amounted to bad luck, before those guns were reduced to scrap.  
No enemy made it past the first layer of defense before an ignominious retreat was ordered, and since most of the larger ships littered the bottom of the strait, about 70,000 mostly infantry had to be abandoned to be captured by the Rumelians. Strangely enough, this resulted in some very strong words between the Imperial officers present and the Rumelian army and new generation leaders. The latter wanted wholesale butchery of the prisoners, and the Imperial officers were adamant that this was a horrible idea, that would create disaster in the future.  
The impasse was quickly broken by the arrival of Colonel Tanya Degurechaff, who descended like an angel from on high, with a company of her top killers comprising her honor guard. Carefully watched by a Commonwealth officer from a long way away, who later reported that with her arrival, the Imperial officers came to attention and briskly saluted, and several of the Magna Rumeli officers, and even some of the new generation officers actually knealt and bowed, or kowtowed before her.  
The argument ended immediately, and the prisoners were put in a beach compound surrounded by barbed wire, but with tents, field kitchens, showers and delousing facilities, an aid station for the wounded, and administrative facilities to notify the international agencies in charge of military prisoners.  
Because the First Lord had not declared war before starting it, it was strongly suggested that the Commonwealth government apologize and provide the new Magna Rumeli government with several tons of gold in the manner of reparations. In exchange, large cargo ships of indeterminate registration were used to transport the prisoners. This created a major problem in Londonium, as not only had they been about to return their currency to the gold standard, which now had to be aborted, but by offloading the prisoners in Londonium itself, rather than the prefered port much further away, they had some 70,000 disorganized soldiers and sailors wandering around their capital telling people of the fiasco.  
Which resulted in the current government failing and being replaced in a snap election.  
The former Sultan, Mahmad VI, having abdicated his throne, and his new wife, one Margaret Zelle, from the Empire, purchased a very expensive villa on the Francois Riviera, and were soon the toast of the town. They got along well with their neighbor, one Horace Nelson, an older man of substantial means, a generous sort always surrounded by a bevy of beautiful young women.

Sabetay Sevi had vanished during the change of government of Magna Rumeli, and nobody had known where he had gone, but much to her surprise, on her island of Mazotte, a courier arrived from the Imperial general staff in Berun, with a message for Colonel Degurechaff. On opening it, she was surprised to see, of all things, a handwritten poem in a very old stylized poetic form. Looking up from it, she saw the smiling face of the courier, none other than Sabetay Sevi.

"We were never able to finish our conversation in the palace. And now, since there is no longer a Sultan, I am no longer confined there, and am once again able to travel. So, after just a brief look at this new world, I decided to stop by and see how you are doing. If there is some time to talk at length, I have some information to share that you might find very interesting."

Tanya set aside her schedule, informing Major Serebryakov that she was not to be disturbed, and to pass the message along to Lieutenant Colonel Weiss, currently supervising a training exercise on the island. She then asked the Major to brew and bring in to her office an entire samovar full of coffee, and a coffee set for two. Visha could not help but stare at the unusual man, but held her tongue before leaving.

He began by saying that their story was far from unique. That the godlike thing loves to experiment, but has no discipline in his experimental method. It gives single and double "blessings" to people, but only recently did I become aware that it had created a triple blessing in a person. Your case I found interesting, because outside of sacred artifacts, it was the first time a blessing was associated with a technological item. Again, there are many of us. Some lead lives that last the normal length of time, and others, like me, have their lives extended. This raises the question is an extended life a gift to help complete a mission, or is it a curse for having failed in it?

Over time I have concluded that while the godlike thing does have real power, and can dispense it to others, it lacks many of the necessary characteristics of a god. In my youth I studied the works of hundreds of profoundly pious and rational men, who over the course of a three millenia hammered out the requirements of godhood. The godlike thing is more like a pagan god, immature, petulant, lustful, and with the emotions of a child. They were created as inferior to man, so men could feel more honorable, moral, and intellectual than their gods.

So if my rational assertion is correct, what can we, as individuals, do about it? And can we be more effective if we combine our powers? Its motivation seems to be to create prayer and faith in it. So what happens when it gets prayer and faith? Just as important, what if it is denied prayer and faith by a world of peace and order, materialism and prosperity?

Tanya replied with the odd offer Being X had made to her. "It seems that it is deeply resentful, even hateful, towards atheists. Apparently it loves the empty worship of the primitive peasants of Russy, and asked me to destroy their atheistic government, with the idea that a religious government, or something like that, would follow. Being X sent me here because he resented my rationality and lack of mindless faith. But this world has millions who have also already abandoned faith for reason."

"These are among the many indicators that Being X is a bad manager with a flawed business plan, throwing one half-hearted gimmick after another hoping for a simple solution to a tremendously complex problem. It has the imbecility of a child that thinks that if every person was given ten large bars of gold at birth, then everyone would remain rich. Even a first year economics student knows better than that.

So, would it be best to sit Being X down and teach him management and economics and macroecomics, or... Tanya's voice trailed off with the birth of a new idea. Sabetay Sevi agreed to stay as her guest for several days so they could talk further.

Then, almost on cue, as if Being X had been listening in on them, Tanya suddenly started getting a flurry of assorted demands for her to be in Berun. While only some of them were genuinely emergent, the totality of them was such that they could not be ignored. And a few in particular were genuinely disturbing.

In past, there had been repeated efforts to both identify and assassinate her by various foreign powers. But penetrating the armor of the Imperial army was extremely difficult. And coupled with a very efficient counterintelligence service, adept at locating and eliminating enemy infiltration, it had cost these foreign powers a lot of resources, who generally disappeared, or worse, were turned to work against their former bosses.

The Empire's political regime and its dominant party had been a great success, but their nation as a whole had become tired of war, with its related human and economic cost. This had resulted in the rise of a rather shrill and irrational opposition party that in many ways echoed the recently victorious "peace party" that had taken power in Londonium. And during the peace conference between the Commonwealth, Magna Rumeli, the recently independent Turkman Principalities, and the Empire, held in the Waldstatte Confederacy, strange and ill considered ideas had begun to emerge, often in tandem with some good ideas.

For example, as a good idea, the creation of a permanent commission on the laws and rules of war, in the form of a great treaty called the Zureich Convention, a generally good idea, Tanya herself recently using the current laws of war, and the lack of laws, to savage ends, and she strongly wished there to be some way so that others would not use such glaring loopholes in the future.

However, a bad idea was the creation of an International Coalition of Nations, which on the surface was to settle disputes between nations, but in reality seemed to have at its core the idea of dismembering the Empire to return its captured territories to those who started the war against it. As well as creating a "war crimes" tribunal to prosecute those who were guilty of war crimes determined after the fact.

The Empire's opposition party seemed to be more than willing to offer up its military leaders, and Tanya, to face a kangaroo court as human sacrifices, to achieve "Peace at any Price", their colorful slogan. The good of the Empire was very secondary to their lust for political power.

Other problems of the ICN idea were numerous. Both the Unified States and the Russy Federation were hoping to use such an organization to their own ends. Both of them sought to obtain advantages over the Akitsushima Dominion, and though very distrustful of each other were willing to in some ways to join forces against both them and the Empire, perhaps as a prelude to an eventual war between themselves.

As Tanya made preparations to return to Berun, something Sabetay Sevi said to her engraved itself in her mind: "You are never closer to the precipice of cataclysmic war then when others are striving for what they call a just and lasting peace." But nothing she could have thought of would prepare her for what was waiting for her there.

It was unnerving that instead of being driven to staff headquarters, her driver had been ordered to take her, by no less than colonel von Rerugen, to the engineering development headquarters of Dr. Schugel. "I am forbidden to say more under threat of being sent to the Russy front." Once Tanya and her luggage were dropped off there, the driver unceremoniously took off.

Once in the lab, Tanya noticed the odd mechanism attached to a pair of oversized chairs, and asked Dr. Schugel if he intended to electrocute her. "Not at all. In all seriousness, I intend to copy you."

Back when I was inspired by God to make a pre-loaded operational orb that was too unstable to load its mana through a computational crystal, I ended up making one, two and three. But I continued to work on the idea and finally discovered that by pre-loading the orb slowly it was much more stable, and its mana could be run through a computational crystal without concern. This meant that with training, a normal person could be given a pre-loaded orb and a crystal and be just as effective as a naturally powerful mage. But what I hadn't figured on was that for a natural mage, their training to use their power begins from infancy.

And this is where you enter the picture. You are perhaps the most heavily trained mage in the Empire. And this machine is capable of copying much of your training and giving that copy to another person or people. They will retain their identity, but with additional competency. And because you are so valuable to the Empire, I have asked Tasya to sit in the other chair, and she will provide a constant stream of healing mana to you.

"But doctor," said Tanya, "where is all this learning going?" "Come, I'll show you", said Dr. Schugel.

In an adjacent chamber, there were a dozen similar chairs, and in nine of them were young girls, about Tanya's age, all of whom looked very much like her, and all sleeping. Filled to the brim with questions, Dr. Schugel continued on with his explanation. "Because your training was very specific to your body type, we scoured all the orphanages in the Empire, of which there are many because of the war, and were able to fine nine girls who look very much like you. Because of their condition, they volunteered at the chance to become mages. If their training holds, they will have good jobs and respect, and if they make it through an enlistment, they may choose to become civilians and lead normal lives. Oh, and they are sedated because it is better to be asleep when you get this training. They do have pre-loaded operational orbs and computational crystals on their necks, to give warning if they start having serious mana outflow during the experiment."

"To say I am apprehensive is an understatement," said Tanya. "You shouldn't be scared," said Dr. Schugel, "the odds of appreciable brain damage are minimal, and besides, this is an order."

In the interim, Tasya had arrived, and already knowing what was going on had moved to her seat. The Frankensteinian process began with several technicians flipping switches and warming up machines. Then Dr. Schugel directed that Tasya begin with a basic healing mana feed to Tanya. And then they began the training flow to the nine. Tanya realized that a lot of mana was draining out of her along with the data being copied. But out of the corner of her eye she saw that Tasya was also squirming, providing a lot more healing mana than she was intending to.

Before the drain could become dangerous, it lessened on its own and both Tanya and Tasya went into a deep sleep. When they awoke an hour or so later, the lab was still buisily working on data, but next door they could hear the girls chattering away. Wanting to meet their lookalikes, they were interrupted by Dr. Schugel, who was happily confused, and needed to tell someone. The operational orbs they were wearing were completely drained, which was not expected, but their computational crystals haven't been used. This likely means that those girls have absorbed ten or twenty times the magic potential of a serious mage. An extraordinary thing.

When Tanya opened the door, the girls were up and about and their eyes were bright yellow lights. Tanya could tell with just a glance that they were filled to the brim and then some with mana. But even though they saw both her and Tasya, they seemed strangely indifferent to them. Right after then was when the luxury cars started to show up, and one or two girls would get in each one before it would leave, taking them in different directions.

Tanya spent a lot of time pondering their fates. Were they just decoys? With extra training would they be deployed to the battlefield? Would they just explode?

Dr. Schugel was of little help, describing them as "nine goddesses". Then, with a pause, he said addressing Tasya, "and you are the tenth goddess". "And Tanya," for once calling her by her name, "you are the eleventh goddess."


	4. Chapter 4

Dr. Schugel was of no help answering Tanya's questions after the rather ungainly "goddess" experiment, insisting that he was not authorized to give her answers. Finally, in exasperation, he said, "Colonel Degurechaff! You do not have a high enough security classification to tell you anything else. You will have to find answers on your own!"

It took a lot of inquiries before the inquiries themselves began to undermine the security of the affair, so Tanya was told to report to a place called the Office of Scientific Intelligence, which was within the Naval office of Research and Development. When she arrived she was sent into a vault within a vault, She saw several heavy locked filing cabinets, and not a scrap of paper on any desk. They didn't speak, only handed her a business card for a physician practicing in the south, a Dr. Siegfried Dreuf, with the date and time of an appointment written on the back. And in someone else's handwriting a note to wear civilian clothes.

Instead of using a vehicle and driver from the General Staff pool, she cautiously arranged to have a late model luxury car, and a driver from her legion, an infantry NCO known for his mastery of close combat. While she could have enjoyed the scenery en route, she had a briefcase of paperwork that needed attending to. She was only halfway through when they arrived in the city of Fiena, where the office was located in his private residence.

A young woman that Tanya guessed was his housekeeper answered the door, then glared at Tanya as she presented the business card. She directed Tanya to an empty waiting room. Eventually, an older man she took to be Dr. Dreuf, asked her in to his office. It was unlike any doctor's office she had seen before, looking far more like a lounge or smoking room, with rather loud decor. Instead of having a chair for patient use, he had a chez lounge. Then the light dawned that he was a psychiatric analyst, which made no sense at all, until he asked her, was she "number five or number six?"

It took her a few moments before she remembered what Dr. Schugel had said, then said, "I gather that I am number 11." His eyes grew wide, and he pulled the cigar from his bearded mouth, before saying, "You mean, the number 11?" He seemed staggered by the information, but then loudly barked out, "Marta! You need to see this! Marta!"

The door opened and in walked the woman who had answered the door. "Marta!," he said with excitement, "I think this is number 11!" "The eleventh goddess?", asked the woman. The old man just nodded his head in the affirmative.

"Pardon me," said Tanya. "I am unfamiliar with your terms. I was told that I could find out about the goddess program here." The woman then apologized, and said "I am Dr. Marta Dreuf, the daughter of Dr. Siegfried Dreuf, this gentleman here. We are both 'Mananalysists', which is a Portmanteau of 'Mana' and 'Analyst'. We work with Dr. Schugel, mostly with mana theory, and he creates the mechanisms that control and direct mana based on those theories.

"So you're not psychiatrists or psychoanalysts?", asked Tanya, to rather puzzled looks from the two. "Er, no. What are those?", asked Marta. "Never mind," said Tanya.

Marta excused herself briefly to get a couple of chairs for herself and their guest, then once seated, she offered to explain, as she said her father tends to go into lots of details, so is much better for technical explanations, but she is much better explaining summaries. However, this rises to the level of a state secret, so we ask you not to casually divulge or discuss any of it with others.

To start with, your variety of mana makes you particularly gifted with creating extremely powerful point weapons, along with other forms of energy useful to combat mages. Dr. Schugel could not speak highly enough of your amazing powers. However, goddess number 10 is just about as powerful as you, but in a completely different way. Her mana expresses itself over a very wide area and it is particularly good at healing.

We theorized that your forms of mana could be combined to produce an effect completely different from either of you. Typically a mage stores their mana in themselves either like a battery or a condensator, which means the amount they can store is limited to their physical body. But number 10 is able to store her mana in a field outside of her body. Yet when your mana and her mana are combined in another mage, along with a large boost of mana, your mana acts as a template for that boost, and an immense mana field forms around them, like they were an inductor.

Each of the other nine goddesses were wearing a super charged operational orb called a number one, and with the energetic template from you, number 11, and number 10, each of them drained their orb when your mana blend was introduced into them. This was their priming charge to create their extensive field, that with exposure to another number one level of mana exposure will allow them to each store a vast amount of mana in something like an immense but almost invisible Leyden jar.

Tanya was speechless. She had seen the incredible power of a number one operational orb when she had used it to obliterate a gigantic weapons manufacturing site in the Unified States. It seemed impossible that a human being could control that insane amount of energy without being vaporized, much less twice that amount.

Marta continued. This is why those operational orbs were called one, two and three. Any goddess could control the energy contained in a number one in a field. Two goddesses could control the energy in a number two, and three goddesses could do so with a number three.

But why?, Tanya wondered out loud. Simple, said Marta. When Dr. Schugel created number one, a brilliant and innovative idea at the time, and you used it, that it could exist became known to the world. And in truth, the technology involved is not that hard. So what can we do to defend against these weapons, so that those with the most unstable orbs won't automatically win? And this resulted in the creation of the goddess project.

Any massive release of mana near a goddess and she will almost instantly absorb and convert it to a mana field. As needed, she can ground that field as well, using your ability, number 11, fertilizing, as it were, a large area of the ground with mana.

"But when I discharge a great deal of mana, it results in an explosion around the projectile, either in the air or on the ground," said Tanya. "In a way, it is like the discharge of electrical energy in lightning," said Dr. Marta, "though the analogy is imperfect. If the lightning hits an object or the ground, it can cause an explosion. But if it hits a lightning rod, it is peacefully grounded."

"The purpose of the computational jewel worn by goddesses one through nine is twofold. First it gives warning if they absorb too much energy, and second, it facilitates the grounding of their field. They do not act like your combat jewel or number ten's healing jewel. The goddesses are defensive weapons."

"I have become concerned about my Type-95 computational jewel, as it tends to cause blackouts in memory during its use, and I fear it may be causing some brain damage." At that point, Marta looked concerned, then said, "I will need to defer to my father about this, as this is beyond my expertise."

Dr. Siegfried Dreuf, who had been quietly taking this all in, suddenly spoke and said that to understand this problem, it would be necessary to first conduct a diagnosis of Tanya's mind. "To do so will require hypnosis, are you familiar with it at all?" Tanya said yes. "Then to get to the more hidden aspects of your mind, I will need you to first take some otherwise harmless drugs that promote mental relaxation."

"In doing so, we will discover whether your memories are actually gone, or if they have just been locked away in another part of your mind. Ordinarily I would use the first drug, called Erythroxylon, which is good to delve into the light subconscious mind and helps with the recall of dreams. But a colleague of mine, Dr. Albert Hoffnung, in the Waldstatte Confederacy, has developed a new drug which can unveil the deep subconscious. It is called Delysid. It takes around an hour to take effect, and in that time I can put you into a deep hypnotic trance. To reassure you, everything you say will be between us, as I have a very high security clearance, and will not even share this information with your military command. With your permission, I will ask Marta for assistance, and would like to tell Dr. Hoffnung if his drug was helpful, without naming names. And finally, again with your permission, for future development of computational jewels, I would like to share my results with Dr. Schugel."

Tanya agreed to the conditions. Then Dr. Dreuf added two more notes, that for a normal person a dose of 25 units of Delysid is sufficient, which over a long time can increase to as much as 200 units. However, because of Tanya's high level of mana, he thought it was best to begin with 200 units, two ampules. And, he added, that wrist and ankle restraints would probably be a good idea, as some higher mana patients tend to thrash about or instinctively try to fly. The drug will keep its effect for about three to five hours.

"If you are agreeable to this, then I suggest you get a good night's sleep in the area, then come to the office in the morning."

The next day, they had her remove her clothes, other than socks, and don a hospital gown. They also gave her a "grounding" computational jewel, in case her mana got out of control. Marta kept notes, using Imperial Shorthand, while Dr. Siegfried restrained her ankles on a strong padded medical looking table brought in to his office. Then he gave her the ampules to drink, one after the other, then restrained her wrists, before beginning his hypnosis.

Tanya's memories of the next several hours were very fragmented. She remembered going to the place outside of space and time where Being X existed, but Being X now looked like Dr. Dreuf, then Dr. Schugel, but didn't speak with her, and Marta was there and looked like Visha. Then she remembered Japan and the employee who pushed her looked like Being X. And then the nine goddesses were standing around her in a circle, chanting something at her before turning into pure white marble statues. Tanya realized that together they represented the classical nine muses.

Then Tasya appeared, as the Titanide Mnemosyne, the goddess of memory and the mother of the muses, and Tanya herself was Zeus, the father of the muses. With her right hand, Tasya pointed to the waters of Ameles Potamos, the river of unmindfulness, which flowed through the realm of Being X, and with her left hand, offered to Tanya, the waters of the Mnemosyne, the pool of memory, which would cause remembrance, and thus stop the transmigration of the soul.

As Zeus, Tanya drank from her left hand, and suddenly all the lost memories were restored. Not in her memory, but in her subconscious. Yet they were again hers, not lost forever, just hard to reach. But it was all confused. Why would she not want to be reincarnated?

And things were not improved as Tanya started to recover her senses. First she noticed that she was still restrained. But the rest of the office had been somewhat trashed. Dr. Dreuf was sitting back in his chair, exhausted, a half dozen burned cigars in the ash tray in front of him. Marta had a large stack of hastily written shorthand notes in front of her, and she was still frantically writing, pausing every now and then to shake her cramping writing hand.

Tanya tried to speak to them, but found her throat to be very sore, so it took a while for Dr. Dreuf to sit up and look at her. "Ah, are you in your normal state of mind?", he asked. While things around her looked more colorful than usual, and she had to struggle a bit to keep her attention from fixating on things, for the most part she felt normal, other than having a headache.

"So, what happened?", she asked, mostly about the messy state of the office. "A great example of 'manakinesis', a number of mostly small objects flying about the room. In retrospect, perhaps I should have fewer such objects in here. As well as some better way of grounding acute mana releases." Only then did Tanya notice that the expensive rug beneath her looked burned as if by a blowtorch. Tanya apologized, before he stopped her by saying that "We have learned more here today than we have in the last thirty years. Invaluable and totally, absolutely classified information that we can never publish. We can replace a rug."

"But first things first. We truly want to hear all about your home world, what Being X is like, and especially what you know about "psychiatry" and "psychoanalysis". Tanya could tell it was going to be a long few days. But after a bath and an invitation to one of the finest restaurants in Fiena, known throughout the empire for its cuisine, she felt a lot better. It didn't do Dr. Marta Dreuf any good, because she couldn't even pick up a fork in her crippled writing hand.

The next several days were spent in a lot of consultation, after Tanya had asked her driver to pick up Tasya, the 10th goddess, and bring her to meet the two doctors. Though Tasya had no memory of any past lives, there was a possibility that her mana abilities were induced in their mother's womb at the same time as Tanya's. That, and she had so many potential connections with the nine goddesses that it was vital that she experience something like what Tanya had experienced.

Strangely enough, the two doctors were the most apprehensive, having no idea, but afraid that it might be as destructive as Tanya's experience. And Marta's hand and wrist were still smarting. Siegfried said it best, "We haven't even replaced the rug yet."

But circumstances intervened, at almost the same time as Tasya arrived in Fiena, Tanya received a message that she had to return to Berun with all speed, so after a warm greeting to Tasya, and explanations from her and the doctors, the doctors offered to comfortably host her for several days, explain what was going on, experiment so far as she was willing, then to drive her home. To make it worth her while, and because she was her sister and living in relative poverty, Tanya wrote her a substantial cheque to buy food and supplies for the orphanages in her area, which Tasya had made her hobby.

After stopping off to change into her uniform, Tanya arrived at the general staff headquarters to find a major meeting in progress. The level of intensity was high, but different from the wartime meetings she had attended before. Colonel von Rerugen seemed to be directing a group of other officers and several civilians, each of whom were addressing a slew of crises that were erupting all over the world.

Now having become a hegemon, the Empire was forced to turn its gaze outward, against the chaos inflicting itself on much of the world. For example, their ally, the Akitsushima Dominion was having to face off against numerous regional fights caused by often very old arguments arising from the collapse of the colonies of the Francois Republic and the Commonwealth in their region, which was also causing enormous problems in Afria outside of the Empire's East Afria colony. Magna Rumeli was undergoing extensive growth problems under its new generation government, and the independent Turkman Principalities were increasingly confused and violent, sometimes against the new colonies of the Kingdom of Ildoa, but more often than not with internecine brawls. There seemed to be revolutions everywhere, something not seen since the year of revolutions in 1848.

The Unified States were contributing to the mess with enormous exports of cheap food, leading them and just three other nations to dominate most world food production and export. While at the same time, Afria was undergoing an unending famine, destabilizing the continent with starvation and demographic wars.

During a pause during the briefings, the question was raised of a definition of "demographic wars". Colonel von Rerugen explained that when a nation, or nations, have too many people to support, or in particular, too many men, in comparison to women, war is almost inevitable, as a means to reduce their numbers, though such wars have at least a thin veneer of some other cause, as no government dared to admit that they were involved in a war just to kill excess people.

Colonel von Rerugen slightly paled when Colonel von Degurechaff held up a hand to ask a question. "What nations are at risk for belligerence due to overpopulation?", she asked.

"Over-population", he slightly stammered at the new term, before thinking to himself how typical, that she so easily envisions people, military and civilians, as mere numbers. "Our foreign office has identified at least half a dozen modern nations nearing that point, and around a dozen, though less predictable, less advanced nations. The Russy Federation, for one, is trying to move in the opposite direction, and has been engaged with some success in forcing population growth, by using some scientific process to impregnate fertile women against their will. And while this will take years to build their numbers, they will eventually achieve enough 'over-population' to engage in aggressive war again."

At that point, a scientist, judging from his garb, offered his opinion that the Russy minister of science, Mudak Lysenko, is horribly corrupting science to evil ends, forcing it to conform with communist doctrines. Under him, the best scientists in the Federation must advance "scientific communism" as they call it, no matter how wrong it is, if they want to not be starved, not get shot, and not be made a slave in a gulag. Lysenko has already killed thousands of them for stating scientific facts that he had decided to change, but told no one yet. But he is a favorite of Chairman Josef for his doctrinal purity.

After the briefing, Tanya decided that she had to visit Dr. Schugel, now that she had the full complement of classified information that he hadn't been able to discuss with her before. Her questions for him were building up, and she suspected that all too soon she would be much too busy with conflicts to talk with him.

First she asked a series of questions about the goddesses, mostly about how they would ground their mana fields. He replied that using their computational jewels was a rapid discharge, like a lightning strike on a grounding rod. At first I was concerned if there were problems to them from a slow discharge, but then made an extraordinary discovery. It would be best if you saw it yourself. I have some basic flight gear here, and will give you a '97' jewel. I want you to fly a few miles east, over to a section of forest over there and land in the clearing in the middle, next to a small cabin.

It was not hard at all to spot that forest. The trees were enormous, very tall and with unnaturally thick trunks, and as she descended, she found that all the plants there, insect life and animals were also giants. The cabin was unoccupied, but had a bed and a desk, and she noted, there was no dust or mess, so it was recently used.

Later, speaking with Dr. Schugel, he explained that until a short time ago, that was a normal section of forest, and one of the goddesses consumed a second number one, then lived there for a few days, slowly discharging her mana field as a test. Truthfully, she was there for safety reasons in case she exploded. Not only did fresh water springs appear in the area, but everything started to grow with a rapid pace. Softwood and hardwood trees, grey rabbits that weigh as much as you do, it resembles a mythical primeval forest. Unfortunately there were no large animals or humans there at the time, though some entered later. Some of the technicians later harvested fruits and nuts, and some wild grain. I forbade them from eating them until they could give them raw and cooked to test animals. But those animals showed no ill effects. They even felled a cherry tree to inspect its wood and it was of premium quality and color. The water from the new springs was pure, and the soil was much improved, the mana turning it into very rich loam.

"If you had seed planted in a desert area and did this," asked Tanya, "could you turn that desert into a high production agricultural area?" "I would think so, assuming you had planted seeds beforehand," said Dr. Schugel. Thus began Tanya's plan to turn the Empire's East Afria colony into the "breadbasket of Afria". But first she had to locate some of the goddesses, convince them to travel with her to the colony, with number one or number two operational orbs, and use her combat engineers to prepare the desert for agriculture.

No easy task, but if successful it could both go a long way to stabilizing Afria, as well as enrich the colony to the point where a lot of wealth would flow back to the Empire.

To start the project, she would need the support of the Office of Scientific Intelligence. To convince them, she would first need supporting data from the economics ministry. Since she couldn't share even a little bit of the classified information with them, she would need to phrase things as totally hypothetical, then rely on their cultish admiration of her for them to back the project.

Things were not going to be that easy, for as much as the economists admired her, they couldn't support her hypotheticals on a "major agricultural project" until they had the support of the Agricultural ministry. Tanya had never been to that ministry, and had very little knowledge of how it worked, other than by supporting farmers.

Supporting farmers was a very small part of what they did. As farmers themselves, they tended to be very rational and realistic people, outside of church. They see what they do as a continual struggle, against the weather, against market forces, and even against other farmers, not just in a nation, but around the world. A moderate harvest means the best return, worse is a bad year, but worst of all is a very good year. The latter can cause prices to collapse and put farmers out of business. The best thing that can happen for a farmer is to have a bumper crop when all his neighbors have been wiped out.

Taken at the grand scale, agriculture looks insane, its individual parts reasonable and rational, but put all together and it is a monster. When Tanya first mentioned a "classified project", the senior bureaucrat she was talking to held up his hand for her to stop, then asked her to join him in the security vault. A vault in the Agricultural ministry?, thought a puzzled Tanya. What surprised her even more is that their vault had security that would make most of the War ministry envious. It even had a special room just for dialogues like this, kept apart from where the classified documents were kept.

The bureaucrat then gave the rather rote expression used in the ministry. "That while diplomacy is war by other means, that agriculture is war when you really mean it." Then he continued on by asking Tanya if she was aware that the Empire was currently embroiled in an "agricultural war" with the Unified States? She knew that whether she answered yes or no, she would get a lecture, so she asked him to discuss it later, as her pressing business might be of considerable interest to the Agricultural ministry.

She explained, that while carrying out some research and development, a weapons system had unexpectedly produced a profound change in the flora and fauna in a large area. Describing it would be impossible due to the nature of the weapons system, so it would be better if she could show the area to ministry scientists and experts and let them reach their own conclusions. They should bring their test equipment and it was likely they would need to collect many samples.

"My purpose in doing this is to get Agricultural ministry approval of a much larger scale test in an area outside of the Empire that at least initially would not draw scrutiny from foreign powers."

The senior bureaucrat was efficient, and quickly assembled a team of scientists, using their own parlance to describe their task. They were very disciplined and assembled their gear rapidly. Tanya then arranged a military flight to the research facility, then called ahead so that a truck would be waiting to take them to the forest. Tanya congratulated herself on cutting through the bureaucratic equivalent of the Gordian Knot even faster than had Alexander.

She told the pilot to do an overflight of the forest, so that the scientists could see it from a distance. She noted that the trees were even larger than they had been, and assuming that would also apply to the insects and fauna, she was sure to bring her sidearm and extra ammo, though mostly just normal bullets, but some short range magical ones as well.

In the back of the truck, the scientists seemed very animated and excited. After arrival at the forest, Tanya curled her lip slightly with the realization that they had all donned tall rubber boots and she didn't have any. After all that time on the Rhine front, and I'm still annoyed with the prospect of getting muddy. Ah, such is life.

The scientists practically bounded into the woods, as anything and everything was just amazing to them. But when one of them saw a grasshopper larger than his hand, Tanya ordered them to stay close, a wise precaution, and they drew even closer when they saw a grey rabbit that must have weighed 100 kilograms. What truly frightened them was seeing a giant boar being attacked by an almost as large giant badger. Tanya dispatched them both with a single magic bullet.

They were ready to leave hurriedly by then, but then they located the small cabin. Grasses and moss had overtaken the nearby ground, but the concrete slab and the cabin were still in reasonably good condition. The scientists were visibly relieved to be able to go inside and see something normal.

This was a great opportunity for Tanya to lobby them for their support in carrying out an experiment like this in an arid desert, designed with ordinary agriculture in mind, converting many miles of barren terrain into very fertile farmland. Of course their biggest concern was water, until she assured them that part of the process brought forth an abundance of fresh water for the plants. One of them said that he had never seen a forest with such rich soil before, soil that typically only happened in river deltas prone to flooding. Then another remarked that a place like this probably had not existed since the age of ancient reptiles.

After the rest, the scientists busied themselves with collecting samples until their kits were very heavy, then the group hiked back to the truck. They were impressed enough to even collect their muddy boots to have extra soil to analyze. The team leader assured Tanya of a glowing report to the economics ministry, and again emphasized that everything said and done was very secret. Though he then admitted that depending on their results, the entire forest might have to be incinerated, either to protect the Empire's agriculture, or to prevent foreign powers from investigating there.

After the agricultural ministry's glowing but otherwise opaque report to the economics ministry, Tanya finally had a ticket to speak to the Office of Scientific Intelligence. She presented them with her scheme as a formal proposal, and after examining her timetable, agreed to provide her with the use of three of the goddesses for a week. They warned her that the Empire would be somewhat vulnerable to enemy attack in their absence.

Tanya had already selected about a 500 square mile stretch of empty desert in East Afria. Her intent was that two goddesses would consume a number two, then slowly discharge. Once the springs had erupted, they would know where to plant. Because this had never been done before with number twos, for safeties sake their discharge cabin would be built on several large pontoons, in case a spring erupted under them.

After they were done, they would leave the area and another goddess would enter, consume a number one and discharge in those areas outside of the first area, to make them fertile as well. Tanya made sure to position some observational mages carefully outside of the mana area, to record the event on their operational orbs. Since the assumption was that the spring water would be pure, trucks were nearby to dump loads of plant waste into the water, to introduce healthy bacteria and nutrients. Then giant freshwater crayfish would be added. They would eat the plant waste but are also very sensitive to chemical contamination, so if they died, there was likely something wrong with the water.

No one suspected that beneath that desert was a very old, very large fault line full of stored energy, and a large aquifer. The two goddesses consumed the number two, dividing up its energy between their mana fields, then layed down on their beds in the cabin to begin their slow discharge. Soon springs began pouring water as much as two or three miles away from them. The trucks moved in and dumped their waste and crayfish, then drove away as fast as they could.

Then it was observed that some of the springs kept enlarging, with more and more water coming out. And then the earthquake hit, and with it the water turned into a flood. The two goddesses were very lucky that their cabin had pontoons, as the rock ceiling underneath them collapsed as the contents of the aquifer was pushed to the surface, leaving a very deep lake below. Yet by this time the flow through of mana had put them both in a very deep sleep. They were still asleep when rescued.

The lake kept growing, and then as more of the rock ceiling and walls above the aquifer collapsed, it became somewhat shallower but spread out more on the surface. Being the only large animal to get such a huge dose of mana, the giant crayfish became enormous. As long as a man is tall, and weighing about as much. Thousands of them, reproducing quickly.

A mage who later admitted it, thought the crayfish needed food, so went to a river some miles away and scooped up some fish which he dumped in the lake. The small fish he picked up included several Nile perch, which may naturally grow to 200 kilograms, but in this case grew to 500 to 800 kilograms. And they found the giant crayfish tasty. But while the initial idea of creating farmland didn't work, soon the tables of the Empire soon had an abundance of delicious perch and crayfish, "from lake Tatiana, which was formed by an earthquake," said the official press release. And once sauciers from Parisii made their way down to the colony to get fresh fish bones and fat, they made some superb sauces Veloute, Tartar, and Tomate that were then frozen and shipped to the Empire with loads of ice packed fish steaks and crayfish meat. They were the feature of the new Fischmarkt Fests, with more local freshwater fish and seafood, that soon rivaled the popular fall harvest fests.

Some of Tanya's engineers, a bit disappointed at the project's failure to make farmland, put in extra effort to build protected side pools for other kinds of fish, and to turn the banks of the lake into an attractive recreational area, planting trees, shrubs and grasses, so that when the third goddess was taken on a perimeter tour, slowly grounding her mana, a healthy forest was created, whose fruits and nuts, if not eaten by visitors, and foliage, would tend to fall into the water to become food for the crayfish.

While they were engaged in this, the Ildoan Kingdom, on friendly terms with the Empire and having recently crowned their new king, was asked by the Emperor if they would like the much larger shared great lake in the northwest of the colony to be renamed after him, since the lake was divided by the Empire in the south and the Kingdom's colony in the north. But he demurred as he already had an Afrian lake in his name, but then made an agreeable suggestion he said came from his staff, that the lake be renamed after a citizen of the Empire that they deeply admired, named Major Viktoriya Ivanovna Serebryakov. The Emperor was agreeable, so the lake was renamed Lake Serebryakov.

The northern side of that lake soon became a favorite tourist destination for those from the Ildoan Kingdom and the Empire, offering beautiful scenery with plentiful wildlife, and a luxury hotel called "The Argent", featuring excellent Ildoan cuisine. When her legion had been particularly good, Tanya would invite the officers for a week of dual holiday and staff meetings in a reserved room there. Since there would have to be a toast at some point in the evening, carafes of wine would be on the table, and Major Serebryakov would excuse herself to get Tanya a fine Ildoan coffee in the kitchen, which was where she spent much idle time, complementing the staff on the Ildoan food they lavished her with.

The male officers spent hours discussing the merits of the Ildoan rifles being sold there and bought more than a few to take home, but none of them had any interest in joining a hunting safari, instead wanting to join motor tours and take photographs.

On the first night, passing by the bar, Visha saw a handsome young man there, wearing the Imperial uniform of a Captain of the Guards Cavalry Division. Introducing herself as an Imperial mage stationed in the East Afrian colony, he said he had been brought as an aide for his superior officer there on business, but had been dismissed earlier in that day so his superior could enjoy the night life. Then he said from her accent he guessed that she was a Russy emigre, and that his family were also from Russy.

She wanted to talk further, but had to excuse herself as she was getting coffee for her boss. He acted casually about it but then expressed an interest in maybe talking some more later, that he would likely be there for the rest of the week. He introduced himself as "Bravo" Fedorov.

Neither of them noticed the two older men on the other side of the bar glaring at them from a booth.

The next morning, while helping Tanya get ready for the day, Visha mentioned the handsome Guards Captain. Tanya replied that it was good that she socialize, but to remember that many men can be predatory. "They can look young and handsome, and still be as dangerous as the men in the legion. Who I'm surprised that haven't tried to seduce you," and then she paused before saying, "yet."

"I think that's because they are terrified of you, Colonel!", Visha blurted out.

"Enough!", said Tanya. "I have had enough of these unfounded fears in the people around me. So, while I won't order you to do it, let me strongly suggest that you go on a social event, a date, with this young man. And when you do, if even for a moment, let at least some of the male officers see you with him. This will convince not just you, but them, that they can normally associate with you without my killing them!"

"Yes, ma'am! Uh, Colonel!", replied Visha, interpreting it as an order.

The next day, Visha was rather nervous and tense, for several reasons. Tanya, however, was feeling a mixture of guilt for browbeating Visha, and the strong belief that she was telling the truth, making her increasingly nervous that this new male wolf would treat Visha like a rabbit caught unawares. So for this reason, Tanya issued Visha a concealed dagger just in case things went terribly wrong, and insisted she take it with her on her date. And so she could wear a formal dress, Visha was excused from attending the staff meeting and wearing her uniform. Great timing as well, because the hotel was holding a formal ball that evening, very popular with guests.

Her plan was good, except that the rest of the staff officers would be in the meeting, so wouldn't see Visha dancing with a handsome young man. So at a given time, Tanya planned to ask her senior officers to step outside the private room to see something "interesting".

When the time came, all of them, Tanya included, were surprised to see Visha ballroom dancing like a pro, in the arms of a handsome young officer, the young couple looking glamorous. By all appearances Visha was having a great time. And then, "Bravo" Fedorov saw Tanya. Speaking to Visha, he asked her if Tanya was her commander. When she said "Yes", he abruptly asked her to introduce him to her. Visha was halfway through a reply that "The Colonel is working, so we shouldn't...", before he spun her around and put a sharp knife to her throat. "I really must insist," he said before pushing her in Tanya's direction.

They advanced towards Tanya and both Visha and Tanya saw that he had a pistol in his other hand. Just then, the two older men, guns drawn, came up behind Fedorov and yelled "Halt!" He quickly spun around and fired on both of them, wounding each. Then turned back towards Tanya while yelling "I have a message from the Politburo for you!"

In the next moment, he fired his gun at Tanya, but missed, a bullet grazing Major Koenig's cheek, as Visha plunged her dagger into his chest, and a half second later Tanya used her sidearm to shoot him in the face, a disfiguring, but not fatal injury.

Somewhat the worse for wear, but not in danger, the two older men identified themselves to Tanya as Imperial counterintelligence officers. And even with bullet holes in them, they searched the wounded man and after examining the contents of his pockets announced that there was likely a bomb in the area, so everyone should evacuate immediately. All the Legion officers and guests had left the building before someone noted a briefcase underneath the table in their conference room that nobody had claimed. Right next to where Tanya had been sitting.

There was nobody around competent to disarm it, so it was allowed to blow up.

One of the Legion officers in attendance was a medical mage, Lieutenant Colonel Dr. Karl Molodoy, and he both tended to the counterintelligence officers and worked on stabilizing the wounded assassin. Tanya was extremely angry at Visha being held hostage, when she asked the two men to explain the situation. They replied that they had been tailing one of the Russy Federation's assassins, with no idea as to their appearance, gender or even target. He was remarkably arrogant, using the name "Bravo" which is a synonym for assassin. What does his last name mean?, asked Tanya.

"Fedorov", one of them paused for a moment. "It means 'gift from God'," which made Tanya grit her teeth and snarl under her breath. "Gift of God Assassin", she said to herself.

When the assassin was stabilized, three very hard looking men showed up in a large car. They claimed jurisdiction over the assassin in the name of the government of Ildoa. One of the counterintelligence officers assured Tanya that where they were going to take him was worse than anything the Empire would do. "He will not be seen again," they said to her. "Some of their noble families still have dungeons in their castles, and bloody minded attitudes towards assassins."

Then Tanya noticed that Visha was off by herself, sitting down in her blood splattered ballroom gown, looking despondent, rocking forward and back, sobbing and crying.

"How is she doing, Dr. Molodoy?", she asked. "Well, given the Major's history, I'm surprised that she hasn't experienced 'shell shock', from all the combat she has experienced. People vary considerably in their ability to cope with such trauma, which is very widespread in the Imperial army right now. The Medical Corps and contracted private physicians and specialists in the mind have been very busy. I often collaborate with them. Mental analysis was my field of practice in the Russy Federation prior to the communist takeover, and my imprisonment for being a mage."

"Do you think Major Serebryakov would benefit from therapy?", asked Tanya. "Almost certainly," he replied. "There is even a some physicians that specialize in the mental health of mages. Every few years, combat mages need mental evaluation to insure they do not have 'shell shock' or other issues that limit their ability to carry out their duty. Their lives depend on it, but they try to tough it out. However the demands of war caused the study to be combined with their physical health and mana strength until recently, when it was integrated with mana study and became a new specialty apart from physical care."

"So, are they mananalysists?", asked Tanya. Dr. Molodoy looked startled. "I'm surprised you have heard of them. It wasn't long ago that the Medical Corps assigned them that clumsy title. Have you visited one?" "That would be classified," Tanya replied coldly.

"Oh, I understand, my apologies. But it would do much to support the Legion's mages and to establish the mananalysist group as legitimate, if you would support a long term program of cycling the mages through based on their combat experience. Dr. Arthur Adler and Dr. Otis Rank are two of the more practiced ones, and for the senior officers there is Dr. Siegfried Dreuf, who is kind of the leader of our group."

Tanya was not the least bit surprised at the mention of Dr. Dreuf, though agreeable to the idea. So she asked him first, about which of the doctors would be best for Visha. "My first choice would be Dr. Adler, as he has the most experience with non-mage 'shell shock', having worked with hundreds of soldiers, as well as female mages. He has a large staff of gifted specialist healing mages for physical as well as mental healing, and some of his female patients have spoken highly of them, for their ability to heal cosmetic injuries and scars as well, even joking that they might accidentally make a woman a virgin again."

"But," he concluded, "I wouldn't hesitate to send any of our mages to any of the doctors."

Tanya realized she had no idea of having such an asset in the Legion. "So, Dr. Molodoy, what is your background as a doctor in the Russy Federation?" He then explained that his family were originally from the Waldstatte Confederacy, but traveled to Russy for his father to work as a bureaucrat and for him to attend medical school at the renowned Imperial Moskva University. "Several of my patients were military mages, who suggested that I was strongly gifted as a healing mage."

"My family first tried to avoid the chaos of the communist revolution and even changed our family name to make it sound more Rus. But right after we had decided to leave the country, I was arrested for being a mage, and my parents were murdered in front of me, which was the policy of the communists. Then in my despair I was sent to the gulag to die, like millions of others."

"Your rescued of us from that horrible place, right when we had been concentrated there to be wiped out, abandoned by God, convinced many of us that you were our benevolent goddess, and we are your servants, though some of us still cling to the old God. We are people of science and reason, and much prefer a goddess we can see, over a God that ignores us and lets us suffer and die."

At that point, Tanya had to get all the officers back to Imperial territory, and had to run a gauntlet of humiliated and apologetic hotel managers and staff, and even some Ildoan nobles vacationing at the resort, while holding the still traumatized and sobbing Visha to help her walk. As soon as they got back, and Tanya helped her shower, Dr. Molodoy gave her a Luminal tablet to help her sleep.

Tanya checked in on Visha at the hotel where the officers were staying in the colonies capital, while arranging a medical appointment for her back in the Empire. When Visha awoke two days later, she was very confused at being totally surrounded by large bouquets of flowers and get well cards sent by the Ildoans as well as the Legion officers. Then Tanya entered and Visha exclaimed, "Colonel! Look at all these beautiful flowers! Why are...", and then she remembered, and began to sob and cry again, as Tanya walked over and gave her a long, caring hug. She just couldn't stop sobbing, though. And after a time, Tanya noticed that she was weeping as well.

The medical leave for Visha, accompanied by Tanya, was easy to arrange and was seen by all as an expression of care for her subordinate. But in truth, ever since Visha's breakdown, more and more Tanya was feeling the years of stress well up inside her as well. After a brief diagnosis, Dr. Arthur Adler said that tentatively, therapy for Visha should take a minimum of two weeks under care at his facility. But this did not sit well with Tanya, as while waiting she became restless and found it hard to sleep, so had taken to making back alley strolls at night.

After some days of this, the manager of her hotel warned her that Berun was under watch because a prolific child killer was active on the streets, and he showed her that days' newspaper. She assured him there was nothing to worry about, as she was a soldier, though didn't mention her concealed sidearm nor her 'Nahkampfmesser' (close combat knife). But he still fretted in her absence.

One evening, cold and rainy, Tanya was so lost in thought that she caught herself and wondered if she was walking around in circles. On this particular muddy street, she was almost certain that she had walked under this small, old stone bridge before. Next to the bridge was an old door, with a dimly lit sign above it saying "Magisches Theater", and because of its poor condition she figured that it was the back door to some entertainment establishment. Just then the sign flickered out, so she figured that maybe it was closing time. Of small moment, she then decided that she wanted to return to her hotel with the idea of forcing herself to sleep, so she would be presentable to Visha who was expected to be released the next day. She slept, but her dreams were restless shadowy nightmares of carnage, battle, explosions, fire, drowning and death, all advancing on her, but just out of reach. She woke up with a start, feeling frightened and even more tired than the night before.

Signing her release at the front desk of the facility, Visha was all smiles, and as Tanya was about to ask her how she was feeling, she walked over and gave Tanya a big hug. She was surprised but even more so when Visha pulled back, then kissed her passionately on the lips. When she broke the strong embrace, Visha once again pulled back, and in a loud voice said, "I love you, Colonel", before kissing her again. Tanya was speechless. But then something very dark, very contained broke free in Tanya's mind. Her tears started flowing freely, painful tears, tears of agony, suffering and despair, and she couldn't make them stop, She started sobbing, and Visha stopped and looked at her face with shock, and then with a strong spasm in her body, blood rushed to Tanya's head as she fainted in Visha's arms.


	5. Chapter 5

Major Viktoriya Ivanovna Serebryakov felt her world had turned upside down from darkness into light. Her therapy at Dr. Arthur Adler's facility had done wonders for her nervous anxiety and despair and helped her recover from her shell-shock breakdown, and she was filled to the brim with gratitude and happiness, the weight of the world off her shoulders. Right then she saw Tanya, the person who had done more for her than anyone else in her life, who had given her incredible emotional intensity, more highs and lows than a normal person could have ever felt, and saved her life more times than she could count, so she rushed to her with feelings of profound affection, love and freedom. She hugged her, she kissed her, her heart overflowing with love.

And then everything went to hell. Tanya suddenly broke apart, with agonized tears, began sobbing in a way Visha had never seen before in anyone, much less her stoical commander, a tortured look on her face. Then she stiffened and collapsed in her arms.

"Help me! Help me!", Visha started to scream at the front desk of the facility. "Please, for God's sake, someone help me!," she yelled, tears now streaming down her face, as nurses, then doctors came running. They told Visha to set her down on the floor until a gurney arrived, and she refused. She could not, would not let her go. Then they asked her to wait in the waiting room as the doctors and healing mages attended to Tanya, and she refused that as well, the look on her face, for these experts in traumatized combat soldiers, was of extreme danger if someone were to try and interfere with her. So they let her come along.

A senior healing mage later said that Tanya was in a deep coma, then asked if she had any recent head injuries, concussions or other serious health problems. Of course Visha didn't know, but thinking quickly she spotted Tanya's driver outside, called him inside and told him the situation and asked him. He didn't know but she had a medical appointment in Fiena recently that lasted several days. One of the doctors then called Dr. Dreuf in Fiena to make an inquiry, as he knew most of the physicians in the city.

Since there was nothing more she could do there for a while, Visha asked the driver to take her to the nearest military base in the area, which turned out to be that of a Feldgendarmerie (Military Police) company. They were taken aback by this very determined, bristling with intensity, combat mage Major, who demanded a high security international phone line. It took several hours for a connection to be made to the East Afrian colony, but once she had been connected to a divisional command there, only a few minutes to get connected to the Island of Mazotte. The night duty officer in Mazotte ran to Lieutenant Colonel Weiss's quarters to wake him, and Weiss ran back to the duty office in his underwear, untied boots, and carrying his rifle.

Major Serebryakov told him that Colonel Degurechaff had collapsed in Berun of an unknown cause, and that as such he was in command, and that was all she needed to say. Within an hour, Mazotte was on high alert and was unapproachable either from the sea or the air. Major Koenig, with his fresh "dueling scar" from the assassin's bullet on his face, that he refused to let healers mend for honors' sake, just knew that it was another Russyan assassination attempt on the Colonel, and Lieutenant Colonel Weiss had to be very clear that the Legion would not act on guesses and without orders. However, he quickly organized and dispatched a security team to Berun.

But in the time it took Visha to make that very brief phone call to Mazotte, Dr. Marta Dreuf, who had been attending a medical conference in Berun, had called her office in Fiena to let her father know she was soon to be coming home, only to be told to "stop by Dr. Adler's facility, as they might have a patient of ours there, a very important one." Before she left the conference, she made it a point to ask another conferee, Dr. Otis Rank, to join her. Though done because he was part of their select group, it was a wise choice as he was a top expert in brain damage and trauma.

Their arrival at the Adler facility was distracting, because after finding out who the patient was, Dr. Marta Dreuf started issuing orders to the doctors, that though Tanya was in a coma in a bed, that she was a highly dangerous individual. Wrist and ankle restraints and a chest strap. And everything about this patient is top security, so all records, all mention of the patient outside the facility were high level classified and all inquiries from outsiders were to be screened through her. Dr. Rank was as surprised as the other doctors there at her pronouncements, until she let everyone know that "this patient is one of the few people who might kill you in her sleep."

During this long interlude, Tanya was dreamlessly sleeping when she woke up to find herself next to the same old bridge on a muddy street, staring at the old door, whose dim sign became brighter, to say "Magisches Theater", but this time there was a second sign, beneath the first, which legibly said "Eintritt Nicht Fur Jeden" (Entrance Not For Everyone). The thought crossed her mind that she was right, that it was the back door for some venue. On impulse she tested the handle and found that it was quite rusted and wouldn't open, whether or not it was locked.

Then the thought crossed her mind that she should go back to her hotel for some important reason, but it was unclear why, and then the thought dawned that she was dreaming. With that thought, everything gained clarity and she felt compelled to examine her hands, front and back. The more she did, in glances, the clearer everything became. And then she woke up in a hospital bed in Dr. Adler's facility. Even with her status when it became clear that she was not actively affecting things with manakenisis, the facility was so crowded with veterans that she had to share a room.

In the other bed in the room with her was an old artillery veteran, a Captain named Fritz Nikolaus. In his '80's, he described himself as a social critic and philosopher, and he told her where she was, and that it was late at night. Tanya quietly listened to him for a while before concluding that he was an enthusistic warmonger who had never fought in a war, with a ridiculous fantasy idea of how noble and fortuitous war was. In discomfort, as his jingoism and racism got progressively more vehement, when he finally ranted about war to eliminate "inferior peoples", Tanya lost her patience.

Not that he would notice it, her demeanor remaining calm, even ice cold. She then told him who she was, "The Argent", the great war hero. At first he was thrilled, but then as she described the inhuman, dehumanizing, filthy, horrible, mind wrenching massacre that war really was, in which there was no honor or dignity or nobility, just industrial savagery, carnage, depravity and defilement, he looked increasingly horrified and embarrassed. Then as punctuation, she passed out and returned to her coma, leaving him unable to reply, or sleep, beginning his long reevaluation of his now shattered beliefs.

The final ten years in the life of Fritz Nikolaus began with books renouncing and critizing his earlier works, and at his literary best to advocate for peace and non-violence. While some civilians lashed out at him in the newspapers, most veterans embraced him as the voice of reason and rationality. He never told anyone about his meeting with The Argent.

Once again finding herself next to that damned old bridge, this time the sign on the door had changed, to read "Entritt Nur Fur Madmen!" (Entrance Only For Madmen), and the old door was slightly ajar. Tanya thought that was just ludicrous, and was just going to walk away, but suddenly she was inside. It was a noisy, smoke filled nightclub smelling of sweat and spilled wine. Men, women, and androgynous people filled it and danced to a jazz band on the stage. She found it to be oppressive and repugnant, and asking a waiter where the exit was, and then yelling the question at him, because he didn't seem to hear, he pointed in a direction. It was the W.C. Opening the door she saw the largest restroom she had ever seen, with endless toilet stall doors.

"Enough!", She yelled. "This delusion or dream is stupid. I'm leaving!" And she woke up in her hospital bed, surrounded by exhausted healing mages. And there, at the foot of her bed were Dr. Siegfried Dreuf and Visha, looking concerned. "What the hell is going on here?", Tanya asked.

"Ah, Colonel. You are feeling well? The best we could tell was that you had what is known as a nervous breakdown. The healers here are very experienced with that, though treatment can consume a lot of mana. In your case, an awful lot of mana. Healing you has exhausted the staff here. So they are getting some time off, and a big bonus in their paycheck." The mages grinned feebly before trodding out.

At that point, Visha interceded by hugging Tanya and crying a bit while stroking her hair, as she was so glad to see her awake again. "I hope you are feeling better, because the general staff has been screaming for you. Some big crisis is brewing, and it's involving several nations, and you and the Legion seem to be the key to solving things. And they won't give out any of the details to me."

"Fine. Get me my uniform. Doctor, if I have your permission to leave, may we exit by the rear entrance?" "Yes, please do. Your security people make the rest of the staff and patients nervous."

Before Tanya could ask, Visha said that Lieutenant Colonel Weiss had dispatched a security rescue team from Mazotte. "Which one? Bear, Wolf or Viper?", asked Tanya. Wolf, replied Visha. Tanya breathed a little easier. Each of the teams was a reflection of their names. Bear was best when someone was trapped inside a building, though the building would be torn apart like a beehive if necessary for the rescue. And Viper would kill everybody but their rescue subject. Wolf was the most disciplined, and would obey orders. But if someone attacked their subject during the rescue, they would be brutal.

Generals Rudersdorf, Zettour, and Colonel Rerugen were present, along with some other top generals and admirals. And Tanya was shocked to see Ildoan and Dominion generals as well. Then Colonel Rerugen introduced an unusual looking Captain of the Empire, a "Hank" Mencken.

"Captain Mencken's family emigrated to the Unified States from the Empire, and he was born there, growing up to be a professional journalist and historian, specializing in political affairs in the Unified States. His family has chosen to return to the Empire once the Unified States began persecuting those who families had come from the nations other than the Commonwealth. He is here today to give the background on the current crises within the Unified States and his estimation that they are soon to make belligerent war in one or more directions."

"Greetings and welcome to assembled officers from the Empire and our allies from the Dominion and Ildoa. The problems in the Unified States began about the turn of the century with a philosophical split between the aggressive nationalists and the aggressive internationalists. The nationalist leader's family had originally emigrated from the Empire, and he was a strong believer in the works of Fritz Nikolaus, to the point of translating his works into the native tongue and plagiarizing it to use in campaign speeches. The internationalist leader's fascination was with worldwide communism, though he couched his beliefs in a more politically acceptable manner."

"For most of the time the nationalist party dominated, but then a series of crises, a decade long drought and the collapse of their economy forced the nationalists from power. The last nationalist president, named Booster, tried to restore their economy with overproduction in areas not hit by the drought and selling grain to other countries, which led to widespread domestic food shortage amid deflation. But it was not enough. Soon food riots, then racial and religious riots were happening everywhere."

"It did not help that two years before the election, his internationalist opponent, named Olfrank, caught an unknown disease called a "brain fever". He survived, but it left him deeply paranoid, subject to rages, and utterly hateful of racial and religious minorities, convinced that he needed a new form of internationalist communism to rule the world. At the same time, he was able to speak to the people with a dynamism and charisma that could not be matched by Booster. He and his party won in a landslide, the last election that was held in the Unified States as he effectively became a dictator."

"His first act was to order the deportation of all the Afrians whose ancestors had been brought to the Unified States as slaves a long time before. The harsh economic times and the starvation made them more than willing to leave, though not knowing they were to be left in poverty stricken West Afria rather than the more prosperous East and South. To accomplish this, he created an army of mostly criminals taken from prisons, who were outfitted in green shirts and pants, called "Green Rangers" to convey the Afrians to the ports, because all commercial ships had been requisitioned, though many were not sea worthy. Many died enroute and after their arrival, but in the mind of Olfrank it was a success, to be rid of them."

"Following that, he ordered that all the itinerant workers, and even citizens, that had come north from New Ispagna, the nation just south of the Unified States, be forced home. This was not as gentle, as many of them were prosperous, and their wealth, great or small was confiscated. They were often arrested at home or work or school at gunpoint by Green Rangers, and while they were unceremoniously put across the border and told to not come back or be shot, other rangers would loot their homes and property, making the green ranger organization wealthy and powerful. There was even a suggestion that at one point a train carrying them south was intentionally filled with poison gas."

"Now Olfrank's attention has turned to oppressing those who came from the Empire, the Kingdom of Ildoa, and the Akitsushima Dominion. And this oppression has been brutal so far, with those of the Empire and Ildoa moved to a giant camp in a swamp in the most southeastern state and those from the Dominion moved to an enormous camp in the desert of its southwestern coast state. This has been done at the same time as an unparalleled military build up."

"This last part is particularly disturbing. This build up is clearly with the intention of large scale invasion. Many adult men are being conscripted and sent to giant training camps, boys and girls are put into political indoctrination and military training camps. Adult women are working almost as slave laborers in military oriented industrial plants, which have been nationalized, as has most other industries and businesses. All the money at the state and local levels goes through trusted party members."

At this point, Captain Mencken ceded control of the lecturn to a Colonel from the Dominion who seemed to be both distraught and enraged.

"President Olfrank outlawed peace movements, calling them espionage tools of foreign powers, and ordered the arrest of peace movement leaders. A prominent and esteemed elderly priest from the Dominion was visiting to speak before a peace rally, when in front of witnesses, he was arrested, savagely beaten by Green Rangers, and when the crowd tried to save him, it was seen that they injected him with poison and threw him into one of their green euthanasia vans, before opening fire on the crowd to make their escape, killing several. This was the first confirmed case of murder by injection that had long been alleged for political prisoners and those that resisted the Olfrank regime. It was later confirmed that his body was seen after being thrown in a mass grave."

"When the Dominion Ambassador made his official protest, the Unified States Minister of State actually slapped him across the face hard enough to break his nose, and demanded that the Dominion embassy close and its personnel leave the Unified States immediately. Shortly thereafter similar orders were received at the embassies of the Ildoan Kingdom and the Empire. And unexpectedly by the embassy of New Ispagna, the nation south of the Unified States."

"The level of sorrow and rage in the Dominion is hard to describe. A large shrine has been built to honor the priest in a park adjacent to the Imperial Palace. On a national day of mourning, the Emperor left his palace, and in front of a great but absolutely silent crowd walked to the shrine, and bowed his head before offering a prayer for the priest and his nation. From that moment, conscription in our military ended, as the military has been overwhelmed with volunteers."

He then offered the floor to the officer of the Kingdom of Ildoa.

"Our intelligence service has been hard at work, in cooperation with the Empire and the Dominion, to quantify the Unified States military build up. They have been working around the clock to build aircraft carriers, battleships, cruisers, destroyers, submarines, support and troop ships, advanced bombers and fighter aircraft, and what are believed to be rockets with ramjet engines. For their ground forces they are emphasizing quantity over quality in tanks, tracked vehicles and trucks."

"Importantly, they have created what our scientists are calling "mana bombs", roughly based on the blast that wiped out one of their facilities. Fortunately they are large and unwieldy at a hundred pounds, so would have to be prepositioned prior to use. Some of our agents gave their lives to discover that the two bombs they have made have been placed underneath the concentration camps in their southeast and southwest. Their purpose is that if any of our three countries fight against them in the future, or try to rescue what can now be called the hostages in those camps, these bombs will be detonated, killing tens of thousands of civilians kept there and crippling our morale."

"Also, they have developed a ground based, anti-mage area weapon that will neutralize enough of the flight mage's mana that they will have to land so that they can be captured by ordinary soldiers or police. It does have some serious range and rate of fire problems, limiting it to one use every twenty seconds, and a maximum altitude of two thousand feet. Any higher than that and it will either just impair the mage somewhat, but they will still be able to fly, or recover enough mana before they land to continue to fly."

"In any event, we have assembled packets about all of these and other new weapons and what we know about them, which will be distributed here. But time is of the essense, as we don't know what the Unified States and the Olfrank regime are planning. So information about that is priority, as well as any other information you decide to share."

After the initial meeting was over, Tanya went to a separate meeting just for Imperial general staff officers. Generals Rudersdorf and Zettour, and Colonel Rerugen, as well as Captain Mencken were in attendance. General Rudersdorf was the first to speak. "Allegedly, even Chairman Joe thinks that Olfrank is deranged, if not outright insane. The Chairman approached Olfrank about a non-aggression treaty only to be cursed at and called a weakling and a coward. This led the Chairman, who is a serious atheist, to say that Olfrank 'must have been cursed by God to be made that much of a madman.'"

Tanya just quietly curled her lip.

He picked up a cigar, then set it down, saying that "My doctor says I need to quit these or they'll kill me." Then general Zettour responded by saying, "My doctor would not say such a thing. I think he hates me," said with a snort of laughter all around. Then Rudersdorf said to the assembled, "What are your initial thoughts?"

Zettour and Rerugen both deferred, so he asked the question to "Colonel Degurechaff?" She said until she could get a lot of information, she would have to defer on actual strategy, however, she wanted to know what goals they wanted to achieve. "First, to rescue the hostages? Second to reduce the military might of the Unified States? Third to decapitate the Olfrank regime?" She paused before adding the fourth possible goal. "And fourth, to do so in such a way as to limit our future animosity with subsequent regimes that rule that nation?"

This caught Rudersdorf's attention, so he asked her about the fourth goal. "Well, general, looking at Unified States history, president Olfrank is a major anomaly. We should not assume that their future regimes will be so deranged. Right now, in the world, the Unified States and the Russy Federation are the most dangerous regimes from the Empire's point of view. And fortunately they are not on the best of terms. So what if we make the effort, the Unified States were persuaded that this or these attacks were perpetrated by the Russy Federation? To have your two worst threats in bitter contention is not necessarily a bad thing."

All the general staff officers as well as Captain Mencken appreciated the idea. At that point, Tanya had already concocted a scheme, but in addition to Russy uniforms it would need some unusual special items that could only be produced by Dr. Schugel. Russy style flying gear was the least of it. She needed flying gear with its own mana source, that could be used to fly by non-mages, like they were mages.

Since the higher ranking officers were wrapped up in thought, she excused herself. Visha was waiting for her outside, and they were surrounded by the Wolf team, acting in pack fashion. So Tanya called over the head of the team, told him that the team were relieved of guard duty and job well done, and to return to Mazotte, with an important message for Lieutenant Colonel Weiss, on a folded piece of paper. Little did he know that it instructed Weiss to carry out intensive martial arts and anti-ship training for the Legion for the next month. Tanya wanted everyone to be in tip top armed and unarmed ground fighting condition.

Next, Tanya went to the Dominion embassy, to get a few months of intelligence data and speak to their naval branch. Right after, she went to the intelligence ministry to get the list of known Russy spies operating in the Unified States, from the journalist paid to keep a close watch on such things, because he was going to be a useful part of her plan. She also picked up maps, diagrams and charts, and a guide to the Russyan language.

Then after dropping off items at her office, Tanya asked Visha to join her for a trip to the Ildoan embassy, that only after they had arrived was it clear that they were there for dinner. The embassy was prepared with a banquet, and Visha knew that Tanya had somehow let the Ildoans know to the minute when they would arrive. And once again Visha could barely taste a bite without going on about how very delicious it was, and how the chefs were maestri, while they were blushing at her complements. When finding something truly delicious beyond compare, she would lapse into Russyan. And sipping her coffee, Tanya enjoyed the back and forth between Visha and the chefs, knowing that all would be satisfied and happy that evening.

The next day was the trip to get to Dr. Schugel's installation, to have the longest discussion the two of them ever had. After they had reached an agreement of what was needed and when, she produced an outsized cheque for him from her personal funds, as it would have taken too long to get it from the economics ministry, and he would need lots of extra production staff in a hurry. Then off to the Naval ministry with the odd request of a brigade of skilled warrant officers and able seamen, both with some very specific training. They were the first to get even a brief synopsis of her grand scheme, appropriately called "Operation Grand Slam", and were very supportive of the naval side, and would definitely attend the full presentation at the general staff headquarters later.

Grand scale, flashy business presentations were an absolute must even for giant corporations unveiling a new product on Tanya's old world. But here, business presentations were still small, subdued meetings filled with dry statistics and number crunching, typically boring to the point where nobody wanted to attend. So when it came time to make her presentation, Tanya went big. A theater projection screen both for film made by various spies in the Unified States, and Tanya's own amazing new invention, for which she had a prototype commissioned, a carousel slide projector.

At one time while walking through Berun, Tanya had chanced on the Imperial Patent Office (Kaiserliches Patentamt), and since then had taken out no fewer than 126 patents, and this was one of them. And besides her presentation, every officer who was there decided they had to have a slide projector, no matter the cost. The royalties from patent leases went to her numbered bank account in Waldstatte, kept with the substantial amount of gold she had picked up along the way.

Since giving such a huge presentation takes at least a day, Tanya had arranged a lunch break in the mess, catered by a team of Ildoan chefs, the "piece de resistance", at Tanya's suggestion, was an exotic Ildoan dish never before served in the Empire, called "pizza", which came in any number of variations and was itself a big hit.

It was late afternoon by the time Tanya's presentation was finished. And instead of immediately taking questions, she asked attendees to confer among themselves in their specialty, with cross conferencing encouraged, and then to reconvene after an hour for the big questions. Then the following day, if her plan was agreeable, only a single individual from each group would act as the liaison there, so that their group could get to work, yet still interact with other groups until the plan was formalized.

The technique worked well, speeding up the timetable, a very good thing, because word came through from spies in the Unified States that its military was undergoing preparations for a massive invasion of New Ispagna. President Olfrank had held a conference some months before on Antelope Island, a lake island in the western Unified States, that the Unified States army would invade from the north over land, while warships from the east and west coasts, filled with soldiers, would land in a grand pincher movement in the south of New Ispagna. Behind the soldiers were "elite" brigades of Green Rangers whose purpose was to exterminate all the civilians in captured territories. At the conference, President Olfrank spent a lot of time dehumanizing and damning the New Ispagnians as vermin and worse. While some of those there personally objected, nobody said anything nor showed any sign of disapproval, lest they be "tossed in the green van."

Addressing each brigade from her Legion separately, Tanya apologized for the mission requirement that they wear authentic looking Russy uniforms and gear. "I know this must make many of you distressed to have to wear these uniforms and equipment, but it is vital that it be done this way. By all appearances the enemy must think we are Russy personnel, which means on mission if you can't say it in Russy, you probably shouldn't say it. Of course if it is an emergency, speak as you must."

"With all seriousness let me say that anyone who is captured will likely be tortured and murdered. Take this into account when dealing with enemy combatants. If you are downed, you may have to rely on your close combat skills, and escape and evade until you can fly again. While your safety is first, remember that there are a large number of civilians depending on you to save their lives."

Her briefings to all the special purpose units varied a lot, including spot inspections of equipment and training. She felt comfortable with her commanders in the legion, and especially Visha, who would be directing a critical operation while appearing to be a mere translator, working under a large and fearsome looking NCO playing the part of a Russy general.

The Marine mages had improved a lot since she saw them last. Their insignia had been changed by adding double cutlasses, symbolizing their mastery of both capturing enemy ships and defending friendly ships. Some brutal training involved, Tanya had heard, alongside enthusiastic Dominion Marine mages. They likely had the most combat operations to perform in the plan. Tanya was also sure to let the Empire Marine mages know that they were fortunate to be carrying out just east coast operations, for if they were with the Dominion mages and they found some Green Rangers, "It might offend your delicate sensibilities." This gave them a good laugh, but on reflection they became thoughtful.

Tanya was soon provided a copy of the Dominion plan to read at their embassy, and after just a few pages was impressed by its clarity and order. Flipping back to the title page she was not surprised to see the names of Admiral Yamatoro, but also the name of his subordinate in charge of the army, one General Hideki Joto, who was an early adopter of Tanya's war philosophy. The best Tanya could tell, their plan was solid. It wasn't possible to move all the Dominion hostages directly to the coast, so knowing that New Ispagna would be chaotic because of the invasion, but not near them, they figured on first taking them south across the border, and then to the coast, at a more relaxed pace. Tanya was also impressed with their effective deployment of submarines on both coasts to serve several important roles.

A major problem that had come to light during the war with the Legadonia Entente Alliance and the Francois Republic was that the transatlantic cable passed through the Commonwealth en route to the Unified States, and they were more than willing to add or delete messages as well as to insert their own propaganda. So in the States, even though the Empire had been invaded, they were depicted as the villains. But it also meant they couldn't even talk with their own embassy without using an elaborate and dynamic coding scheme. So long term plans were made to overcome this handicap.

Now that the Empire had achieved secure communications with its colony, the Dominion, the Kingdom of Ildoa, and their military forces wherever they were, it was possible, in a new, high security building in Berun, to make a war room used by all three powers at once. Here would be the true conductor of the symphony.

However, just about everywhere there was a perpetual problem in maintaining security, that of infiltration from an unexpected source, communist volunteers. While not Russyans, they philosophically believed in the idealitic fanaticism of communism, and were more than willing to go to any length to betray their nations to further its terrible goals, thus they were aligned with the Russy Federation. However, its near invisible pervasiveness forced all other countries to maintain hearty counterintelligence efforts in those places most vulnerable to infiltration.

With considerable irony, the nation with likely the worst unchecked infestation of treacherous communists was the authoritarian communist regime of the Unified States. Olfrank's embrace of his own version of communism, and bringing his variety of true believers into the highest levels of government, yet disdaining the Russy version, meant that it was impossible for his counterintelligence forces to distinguish between the two, the loyal communists and the treasonous ones.

And yet, even before his regime had obtained power, Tanya's efforts had charted and infiltrated the Russyan-backing infiltrators, at least enough to feed them false, but correct ideological orders from Chairman Joe. A single journalist who was secretly employed by the Empire, had managed to penetrate the network of Russy supporting infiltrators, and become a trusted part of their leadership. Far too valuable to use casually, he kept the Empire's intelligence branch up to date on everything communist in the Unified States. And he was going to carry out a subtle scheme once "operation grand slam" was taking place, to insure the Unified States communists believed the Russyan communists were behind it all, and the Russyan-supporters would subtly back the attack, not knowing otherwise.

At one point, in contemplating his success, Tanya had remembered a line from a movie she had seen in her former life. That "This person, this traitor, will be worth more to us than ten legions of Sardaukar!" And yes, while not a perfect analogy, it gave her a wry smile for a while.

And she was reminded of this again, when he came through when he came through with a very important piece of intelligence, from Olfrank's inner circle. That Olfrank had lost confidence in the leadership of the Green Rangers, whose power and wealth had grown so much he suspected that they would soon seek to overthrow him. So after the invasion of New Ispagna, he intended to exterminate their leadership and seize their wealth. And if the invasion had any problems, or if the foreigners in the camps had to be incinerated, it would be blamed on them.

To carry this out, he had ordered the creating of an elite unit, recruited from the army, of a very loyal Praetorian Guard, answering only to his chief of finance. Unlike the criminals and street thugs of the Green Rangers, a requirement to belong to this "Protection Squadron" was that they had a minimum of a Master's degree, a high level of physical fitness, and swore an oath of loyalty just to President Olfrank. After their creation, Olfrank divided the Protection Squadron in two. The larger part was to be a combat group independent of the army command, taking orders from the finance branch and directly from the Green House, the home of Presidents of the Unified States and now Olfrank for as long as he wanted it. The smaller part of the Squadron, who despite their education were determined to have psychopathic tendencies, were to replace the Green Rangers who had been tasked with exterminating captured New Ispagnians.

Olfrank pitched this to the Green Rangers that it was far more important for them to defend the homeland from the increasing threat of traitors within when its forces were out of the country, a ruse they accepted at face value. He even offered them more latitude to torture and kill dissidents in their giant field barracks prisons around the country.

Meanwhile, a gigantic military base had been built in the most southern state north of the border with New Ispagna. At its center was a tank farm, giant tanks filled with fuel for both ground vehicles and aircraft. To its east and west were a seemingly endless numbers of tanks, mechanized vehicles and artillery. A pipeline went to the north to a great airfield with a thousand each bombers and fighter aircraft, far more advanced than in the rest of the world. Only a few companies of ill trained flight mages, mostly as artillery observers were there, since the government of the Unified States trusted them just a little more than did the Russy Federation. There were only a modest number of infantry as well, in tents on the south side, on either side of the great invasion corridor. The vast majority were in tent cities on either coast, waiting to board the invasion fleets, with warships temporarily modified and stocked to carry more than a hundred thousand soldiers down the coasts of the Unified States and New Ispagna.

Imperial intelligence worked overtime to thoroughly map this military base, and spent many hours trying to calculate how to neutralize it, before it was shown to Colonel Degurechaff. She took it as an assignment and said to them that it would not be a problem. The men standing around her paled, as by their estimates it would take three mechanized armies a week of "knock down, drag out bloodbath", an expression used in the States, to take down a base of over 500 square kilometers. "She must be friends with an archangel with a flaming sword of destruction," said one of the men. "No," said another, "She is one."

Just another assignment for Dr. Schugel, thought Tanya. The trick will be safely transporting it to the target. For his part, Dr. Schugel agreed with Tanya's estimation, but was almost contemptuous of the low level of technology wanted. "It will be ready in a week," he said. "It would be bad to remain in the area," he concluded as an afterthought. That is the understatement of the year, you madman, thought Tanya.

About then, the Yamato and several distanced tramp steamers left Mazotte, heading on a roundabout trip to the east coast of the Unified States, when at about the same time, the Musashi and seven of her sister Yamato-class submarines left the Dominion.

In an idle time some years before, Tanya had seen fit to visit the Imperial Berun Library on Unter den Linden, and much to her surprise and happiness many of the great classic works of literature from her old world existed there as well. Even the works of Shakespeare were intact, for the most part, with some differences. She only had the time to read Julius Caesar, which she knew well, and thought about using some key phrases when addressing her soldiers. She figured that this was one of those times.

Operation Grand Slam had officially begun. Never before had such a grand military plan come into play. Whereas the campaign at Cannae, the Battle of Austerlitz, the Battle of Gettysburg, and Operation Revolving Door had all earned chapters in the history books, if Operation Grand Slam was a success, it would rewrite the history of war completely.

Though the Commonwealth military had been substantially reduced by their new government, even they could tell from the encrypted traffic that something major was happening. They knew of the impending invasion of New Ispagna. It was hard not to. But they couldn't figure out why parts of the Imperial army were very noisy, yet other parts, and the Imperial navy, just had routine communications traffic. Their conclusion was that the Empire just wanted to see how the army of the Unified States performed in the field, though not to take an active part in that war. But this was an essential part of the scheme, from the point of view of the Empire, using a system that they knew was monitored for low volume, unimportant traffic, and their new, highly secure means of communication for the very high volume of real data. This meant that long after the war, they could assure other nations that the Empire had just remained neutral.

In the Green House over the last week, President Olfrank had been in almost a constant state of rage. He could no longer control his feelings of hatred at his subordinates, his nation, just everyone, that they had failed him, that they conspired against him and laughed at him behind his back, and that they were all traitors who should be shot. That, and the agonizing headaches that forced him to take drugs, though they did little for the pain or the frequency, they allowed him to issue orders. His aides knew that if they were to quit his service, they would be tossed on a green van within an hour, so they lived in terrible fear for themselves and their families.

The only thing that truly helped was that he knew that the moment he gave the order, the invasion of New Ispagna would begin. With its success all of his problems would be over, he would again be beloved by his people, and remembered forever as a national hero. Just then, after he had gone to the restroom and was washing his hands and face, a truly blistering headache hit. It was so fierce that it caused capillaries to burst in his left eye, turning its white bright red. After he shouted in pain, he screamed "Why do they hate me, damn them!"

One of his two aides standing near him made the wrong choice of offering the president a towel. Momentarily confused he thought it was an assassination attempt, pulled out his handgun and fired it at the face of his aide, instantly killing him. The other aide was about to say something, then had the red in the face, red eyed president point the pistol at him, yelling "Go ahead! Say the wrong thing!"

"I was about to say, sir, would you like me clean that up?", pointing to the dead aide on the floor. He mumbled "yes" and walked out. Back in his office, President Olfrank picked up his phone, pushed a button to connect him to the headquarters of the Protection Squadron, and issued an order code named "End of Green". When asked to authenticate, he used the word "Hummingbird", and hung up the phone.

The plan of the purge of the Green Rangers had recently been expanded to include all of them. It began in the early night and before the night was over, all their funds had been confiscated, the officers were arrested then executed in their cells, and the various barracks of the Green Rangers around the Unified States, and their enlisted men, had been burned by flame throwers. Within a few days, there were almost no survivors. While there were no public displays of celebration at the end of the hated oppressors, there was no mourning, either.

The captain of the Yamato and his crew were very experienced, and had even trained in the tight confines of fjords without a scratch on their hull, but after leaving the tramp steamers down the coast, they continued north until they had entered the Chesapeake Bay cautiously, watching for submarines, surface ships, and anything else, especially hostile actions. Once in position, they turned about, then slowly lowered themselves into the mud of the bay and tried to be as quiet as possible.

They had about a day to wait, time Major Serebryakov spent with her team refreshing the plan, checking uniforms and equipment, as well as very rehearsed dialogue. Everyone in her team were Russy mages, and very skilled at close armed and unarmed combat. By now they had even gotten used to the idea of calling their official leader General Popov, though Visha was clearly in charge.

When night had set in, the sent up a floating radio antenna and waited for the signal. Within a minute of the appointed time, they got the message.

"Cry 'Havoc,' and let slip the dogs of war." To which they responded "Cowards die many times before their deaths; The valiant never taste of death but once." Message received, mission starts.

The Yamato surfaced. A team of very determined, very deadly flight mages emerged, then as soon as they were assembled, "General Popov" gave a hand signal and they took off. Departure confirmed, the Yamato again submerged and made its way out of the bay and then further south past the tramp steamers, pausing there only to pick up some precious cargo. The mages made a beeline to the Green House, about 32 miles away.

The place was surprisingly quiet. President Olfrank forbade the usual large staff from "prowling around at night", and the security personnel that remained were used to strange noises, even gunshots, that they ignored unless summoned. The late wife of the President had died in an accident he had ordered some years before, and he had no problem with using that tragedy to advance his ambitions. So young children were provided to him so he could satisfy his beastly urges. They were expendable and discarded after to avoid scandal. But this night, even the thought of that made his headache worse, so he told his bed companion to get out. She knew at that point that her life was forfeit.

As the half nude girl clutching her shirt then tried to leave his bed, President Olfrank yelled "traitor!" and pulled a gun from a bedside table, before firing a shot that would have likely killed her except his wrist was suddenly jerked upright with the sound of the bones in his wrist breaking, so the bullet went wide of its mark. The girl then darted out of the room before anyone could think to stop her.

The President of the Unified States then gave off an undignified scream, and a second scream after a very large man in a military uniform, still clutching his broken wrist in his hand, appeared beside him and said something he didn't understand. Then a girl, also in a military uniform, appeared on his other side and translated, with a heavy accent. "President Olfrank, you are now our prisoner. Please do not resist."

"Like hell I won't," he yelled, though his struggles were short lived, as other men appeared, artfully bound his wrists, ankles and legs, and gagged his mouth. Visha left the room before speaking into a radio set provided by one of the men. Her message was simply, "Veni, vidi, vici." The voice on the other end said, "Fly not. Stand still. Ambition's debt is paid."

This told her several things. First that no alarm had been given, so they likely had several more hours before they had to leave. The last phrase meant that "Operation Grand Slam" was continuing on schedule. She returned the radio then reentered the room. General Popov then asked her what the next course of action should be?, and she replied that all was well, to order that he be given the injection of sedative.

After struggling hard on seeing the syringe, which had ended so many lives on his order, President Olfrank was then expected to sleep for the next day. However, after the mages left, the little girl who had run away in fear for her life returned, holding a large kitchen knife.

After having left the Green House as discreetly as they had entered, they landed in a quiet section of the city where a bus was waiting for them. After loading their gear in boxes in the storage compartment, they enjoyed a night drive some 200 miles south for the next phase of the operation to begin. After having some snacks, Visha was so comfortable in the padded seats that she took a long nap.


	6. Chapter 6

While Project Grand Slam continued on track, no one knew that President Olfrank of the Unified States was lying dead in a large pool of blood on the floor of his bedroom, stabbed dozens of times in a blind rage by a young girl. While drugged and tied up with a gag in his mouth. The girl had long since fled, and with a change of clothes had hitchhiked far away and was never seen again.

The war room in Berun did not know this, nor did Tanya, Visha, or anyone else. When the body was finally discovered by an aide in the early afternoon, who suspected that the president perhaps had fainted, several phone calls later the top leaders in his communist party decided to pretend he was still alive, but incapacitated, and to rule in his stead as a junta. On the heels of the Protection Squadron massacre of the Green Rangers, their first major decision was that since the nation was poised for war, and deeply in debt because of the preparations, that the war should commence, in that it would cover a litany of sins, and they would obtain a lot of wealth to pay for it all in the process.

Plus there was tangible fear that unless the Protection Squadron was sent away until order was restored, they might very well launch a coup against the government and appoint their own dictator, as did the Praetorian Guard of old. That vast numbers of New Ispagnians were to be slaughtered in the process was no great worry, especially if the Unified States were to remain Olfrank communist with the junta as its elite leaders. They were more than willing to smash all those eggs to make themselves an omelet.

There were some words between Visha and the war room in Berun, with her assuring them that Olfrank had been left very much alive, excepting a broken wrist. And nobody seriously considered calling a halt to the operation. In any event, Operation Mirror was now underway. It was called this because very similar operations were being carried out in the far southeast and far southwest Unified States.

Phase one was to land mages, with two goddesses in each hostage camp, a swamp and a desert, in case someone tried to detonate the mana bombs. Some time before, Tanya was befuddled how goddesses seemed to take three times as long to learn how to fly with self propelled gear than even weak mages, but they finally managed to do so, so would fly in themselves, under escort. Combat mages would be sent in at the same time to exterminate camp guards and managers, with no shortage of volunteers for that assignment from the Russyan mages who thought of themselves as angels of death against gulag guards. Tanya gave them all the extra assignment that whether or not the mana bombs were not detonated, they should be spirited away and disarmed, then dropped at sea, and there were very good reasons for this.

Phase two was of amazing audacity, to steal two fleets of warships prepped to transport invasion troops, and use them to instead take all the hostages to freedom. This was why the tramp steamers were filled with Naval warrant officers and able seamen. With Naval Marines to secure the warships and keep them secured. The mirror image of this were Dominion Navy personnel brought in by submarine. In both cases the ships were stocked and fueled, but otherwise empty waiting for orders from the Green House, as were the infantry sitting idle waiting for their orders to board, in camps miles away from the ports.

And Tanya's orders to the Naval teams were that if a warship couldn't go under its own power, to scuttle it.

What was originally called phase three, was later decided to be its own separate project, to be carried out by just Tanya, with her Viper security team backing her up, which to avoid confusion she just called Project "K". And nobody but her, her team and Dr. Schugel knew what it was, other than it was to take place in the heart of the invasion force before they began their invasion.

Otherwise, the false information had been fed to the Russy backing communists at all levels of government and business, and like good fanatics they had taken it without question. Already on hostile terms with President Olfrank and his heretical version of communism, they were not surprised at all with the idea that he intended to tear down his communist system in the Unified States and replace it with the capitalism that had thrived before his reign. So when the invasion begun, they were going to broadcast this re-institution of capitalism everywhere, so that the great numbers of real communists among the masses in the nation would rise up, depose him in a revolution and impose Russy style communism. To aid them in this they would come out of the woodwork and assassinate every heretical communist leader they could catch. A plan that, except for the last part, was utter delusion on their part.

Little did they know that a list of the names of every Russy supporting infiltrator was going to be delivered to the headquarters of the Protection Squadron shortly after they did this. Yes, the bloodbath was going to be spectacular, the Squadron eliminating them with the same savagery they had used on the Green Rangers.

Major General Kobayashi was the commander of the ground forces in the rescue of Dominion subjects on the west coast. He was on board the submarine Musashi with his select "black battalion" of combat mages who specialized in night combat operations, the best of the best in their black flight gear, and intensely trained for this mission. While very loyal to the general, knowing him as brilliant, they were also of the belief that like his disciplinarian deputies, he must be a hard man himself. So at they were dismayed at his acting like a doting parent of the two petite little twin blond girls before them.

However, word quickly got around that these were not ordinary girls, but goddesses. Most of what was known of such girls was based on wild rumors surrounding Tanya-sama that floated around the military, each more improbable than the last, until someone would step forward to confirm it, as having seen it themselves, whether or not they had. Among other stories was that when she had visited the Imperial throne room, the plain surfaces suddenly shimmered as if covered in gold leaf, and the artwork for the moment was seen in shades of gold, before she imparted the blessing of heaven on the Emperor and his descendants for the second time in history. Many of the iron soldiers began trembling in awe, and yes, fear.

Then the general spoke to his elites to say that these girls will be flying with you, and their purpose is to protect your countrymen held captive by the evil ones. You must protect these goddesses at all costs, even while smiting those demons who loom in a menacing fashion over them. The unit answered as one in the affirmative. Then the general left the room with the girls as his subordinates once again went over the details of the plan to take the camp, rescue the hostages, transport them across the border, drive to the coast and board them on ships to return them to the Dominion.

For three days an unimpressive ship was anchored off the southern west coast, but one after another they unloaded large boats into the water, after equipping them with engines. Soon the ship was surrounded by many such boats all lashed together. Then one after another, submarines surfaced and deployed their passengers who went to a given boat. Eventually all the boats had crews and were untied from each other. Then as a group they all departed in a single direction.

And with some variations, the tramp steamers did the same off the central east coast. Both boat flotillas headed for where the eastern and western fleets of the Unified States rested in their docks. Then at a given time, the "black battalion" on the west, and perhaps twice that many Imperial Naval Marines (crossed cutlasses), but dressed as Russy mages, on the east. Once airborne, the only battle cry they were permitted to use was the Russy "Ura!", but on deck the last they heard of their own languages was the signal to take off, the Dominion Navies' "Tora! Tora! (expletive) Tora!", and the Imperial Marines cry of "Gott Mit Uns!"

On the docks, just skeleton crews were aboard ships, and even the traffic management command building just had a few men working there on either port. In the east, an older man named Boyd had just sat back in his chair with a fresh cup of coffee, when the door flew open and four heavily armed men wearing unusual uniforms burst in, detained the other three men with minimal fuss, as he sat there sipping his coffee peacefully. He calmly watched them cut the phone lines, smash the radios and other equipment, and finally when one signaled for him to stand up, he took one last chug of coffee, set his cup down, stood up and put his hands behind his back. Then the men left, so he figured it would be about four hours before the next shift arrived. Nobody got killed, and he was too close to retirement to care.

The mage team raiders on various ships had more or fewer problems, but the most that resulted were some black eyes among the crews. Escorted on to the docks where they were secured, they were still startled by the flotilla of boats suddenly arriving next to ships. The men that disembarked went directly to the ships. It didn't take long for them to figure out that they were stealing those ships. And not long after their mooring lines were slipped, and they started to move out of their dock, one after the other.

In truth, there were just enough raiders to get the ships that were not scuttled out of port. But once that had been accomplished, they were joined by many other sailors at sea, and in both cases headed south down the coasts.

In the southeast, the general Protection Squadron (lesser) guarding the camp were put down quickly, like dogs, but when the camp commander thought he was detonating the mana bomb beneath the camp, nothing happened. In frustration, he pushed the switch several times before a bullet tore through the side of his head. In that case, the goddesses were not needed, because a quick thinking mage had cut the wires to the bomb. Once disarmed, it and the two goddesses were escorted away with all due speed. It wasn't too far a walk from the swamp to the beach where landing craft were waiting to take the hostages to the ships. Small children, the old and infirm were carried there by mages.

On the southwest, some of the Protection Squadron (lesser) tried to mount a defense against the black battalion, which was no contest, then tried turning their guns on the Dominion civilians, which made the soldiers of the black battalion angry. They soon learned that black battalion mages all carried two razor sharp Wakizashi shorts swords as part of their standard gear, and at high speed they will cut a head off cleanly.

Because it would have been too long a walk to both get south of the border and then to hike to the coast, there had been an effort by all three allies to get all manner of trucks that one after the other were loaded with men, women and children. Enough so that the last of the hostages, mostly adult men, were not overcrowded. The whole group were shielded the whole trip by invisible flying mages.

Not knowing how to get in touch with President Olfrank, the Unified States military high command got so frustrated that some admirals even drove to the Green House, only to be told that the President was ill and resting and would not take visitors. The junta was not operating from the Green House, and so were unaware that they had lost both of their fleets, when they issued the order for the land invasion to commence. Having mostly academic, not military backgrounds, they assumed that once the order was given it would be carried out without delay, with no further action needed on their part.

The northern invasion forces into New Ispagna took far too long to get organized. Just fueling up their tanks, tracks, trucks and aircraft was estimated to take half a day. The small number of artillery spotter mages were sent early, to plot targets, checkpoints, and to confirm highways and roads. All ordinary, but time consuming stuff. After a few hours, the rear echelon Protection Squadron (greater) was anxious for the first echelon to get moving. Being mages, they were a cut above their psychopathic prison guard peers and thought they could hold their own in a fight. But training is not the same as experience.

Meanwhile, in the major cities of the Unified States, including the capital, the order was issued to the Russy sympathetic communist infiltrators to begin the revolution by assassinating as many of the heretical communist followers of Olfrank as possible. Two hundred or more politicians and governors were killed within hours, typically with a single bullet in the back of the head. But business executive, journalists, military officers, police chiefs, college professors, diplomats, and many bureaucrats were also dispatched. Most of the junta had themselves fallen victim.

And then at the headquarters of the Protection Squadron (greater), they received a comprehensive list of the Russy communist infiltrators who had been carrying out the slaughter, and it was turned around on them as had happened to the Green Rangers. Squadron leaders were determined to achieve eradication of the Russy communist infiltrators in the entire nation.

In the midst of the invasion preparations, mostly complete, Colonel Tanya von Degurechaff, surrounded by her equally invisible Viper security team, was standing in the middle of the invasion forces, specifically in the middle of the tank farm itself in the middle of the invasion forces. With a briefcase. In an unexpected, driving rain.

In the briefcase was a complicated detonator locking device, made to insure that once unlocked, with a five step process, it was extremely hard to again render it safe. Though it was also terribly hard to unlock it in a hard rain. It was taking too damned long.

Likewise it had an advanced timer that needed to be set. Tanya wanted a half hour to escape, that even flying at a lower speed, she wanted plenty of time to get her and her team out of there. The reason to do so was simple. In that briefcase was a "number three".

It was at the worst possible time that one of the Viper team, Vizefeldwebel (Sergeant First Class) Krumholtz, acting as a flying picket to the north, suddenly came under fire from a battalion sized element of Protection Squadron (greater) mages. His invisibility had been compromised by the rain, so they were able to see him and opened fire. However, based on experience, he believed they had only seen him, not the rest of the team or Colonel Degurechaff on the ground, so he was trying to lure them away into the desert so they could continue their mission.

Tanya agreed with his logic, and told him to fly as fast as he could as far as he could, while keeping the enemy engaged, that when done, she and the rest of Viper would fly away on a different route. If he makes it away, something she thought almost impossible, they would link up in an agreed upon town in western New Ispagna.

So far in the fight, Krumholtz had already been seriously wounded, but he had also killed six enemy, yet they were learning and adapting so fast that it had an almost Rhine Front intensity. He figured if he wounded one of them, another would be needed to fly him away. The rest of Viper listened to his account of the ongoing battle intently. Then Tanya announced that the device had been set with one half hour to detonation, so everyone needed to retreat as fast as possible. Krumholtz acknowledge and said he was retreating, but it was a lie, because he knew he had been mortally wounded. With insult to injury, he had also been hit by a ground based anti-mana weapon, and he was losing altitude.

Instead of landing on the ground, he had spotted what looked like a cave and figured if he could hide in there, the enemy would run out the clock, in a literal sense, and if they found him, he would destruct his computational jewel, blowing himself up, and the enemy near him to bits. And if he died in that cave and wasn't immediately found, the cave would fill with muddy water and conceal his remains, denying the enemy proof of a kill.

Fading in and out of consciousness, he had no idea if the Colonel or Viper team members could hear him, he described how much he respected the Colonel, and liked his teammates, the honor of having served in the Legion, and how patriotic he felt towards the Empire. They could hear him and were choking back their tears. Then they had to shut down their comms just before the detonation, so missed his final words, that from his cave he could see all those enemy mages buzzing around in the sky above like angry insects, looking for him. And then there was a very bright flash of white light and just for a moment he saw them disintegrate mid flight.

Since that time, a prominent terrain feature in the Unified States is called the great bowl of black glass and steel. It covers about 600 square kilometers and forms a circular shape. It is slowly eroding, the melted steel now covered with a reddish brown layer of rust. In its middle is a salt lake, formed when a small portion of a giant salt dome beneath it liquefied and pushed its way to the surface, forming a lake of liquid salt. When it cooled, rains came and formed a water lake on top of the salt. The locals who dwell near the bowl call the place "Armageddon".

Far to the south of the blast, and well out of the blast area, the effects of the blast were still strong, with Tanya and the rest of Viper team feeling debilitated, flying much slower than normal and at a lower altitude. But this allowed them to see another group of mages sitting on the ground, or sleeping. They were recognizable as Unified States artillery spotter mages, and were so exhausted they couldn't get excited even in the presence of what were likely hostile foreign mages.

One of the Lieutenants in Viper happened to speak their language so asked them "what's up?". The soldier replied that when that big explosion happened it stripped their mana away, leaving them "as weak as kittens." He continued by saying, "If we are now prisoners, we can accept that, but the only way we can move now is to walk, and then not much, until our mana recovers."

Tanya pondered this then took the Viper Lieutenant to one side and spoke with him. So he returned to the soldier and said in his language, pointing with his finger that there was a small village about one and a half kilometers in that direction, and maybe they can get some food and water there, once they were back on their feet again. "Uh, thanks", the man replied. "By the way, who are you?," he asked the Lieutenant, who returned to Tanya, then came back with her answer.

"Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds."

"Huh?", the soldier replied. Then Tanya and her team left.

When asked about why she spared them later, she replied, "I get no joy out of kicking crippled kittens."

It was a long trip for Tanya and Viper flying to the gulf. For some time the Yamato had been monitoring the chaos in the Unified States. The Russy communists were murdering the Olfrank communists, the Protection Squadron in turn was rounding up and executing the Russy communists. The military seized power from the few survivors of the junta, then set up a temporary military junta government until elections could be held. Whoever was running the military was smart, wanting a quick transition back to civilian rule; and at the same time offering an amnesty to the Protection Squadron that most of them could rejoin the military as it was being disbanded, with only a few being criminally prosecuted. The official story had changed several times, but it was now that President Olfrank had died in his sleep.

The intelligent consensus was that the Russy Federation was responsible of trying to foment a Russy style communist takeover, but it had collapsed due to the efforts of patriots, but at the loss of many lives. Thus, while not actively at war, a mood of distrust and aggression existed for the foreseeable future between the Unified States and the Russy Federation.

But according to the war room in Berun, there still remained a problem of what to do with all those prize ships. While of course they would be looted for innovation and technology, their existence made a more lasting peace much harder, so the consensus was that they should be discretely scuttled. Tanya, while in agreement, had an idea so it would not be a total loss.

She knew that while currently, submarines were fairly primitive, in the future it was likely that they would become common and dangerous war boats.

To counter surface ships, flying Marine mages and aircraft were effectively neutralizing them to a great degree, but despite some simple and modestly effective anti-submarine weapons, submarines could for now function unmolested. The way to change this would be with underwater combat mages. She figured to start, versatile underwater mini-submarines, scuba gear, mana weapons that would work underwater, and most important, trained underwater naval mages.

Typically, with the right equipment, a technical dive could only descend a mere 60 meters. But what if an underwater mage, with a swift underwater vehicle, could descend to 300 meters, surrounded by the pressure of thirty atmospheres, yet still function and use their weapon?

This meant she needed to pay another visit to the Naval Office of Research and Development as well as the Office of Scientific Intelligence. Her idea was that after removing the toxic chemicals from the ships, they would be scuttled on natural underwater steppes, in the cold waters off the northern Empire, and the warmer waters of the Dominion and Ildoan Kingdom. Then with the help of a few goddesses, the ships would be made magnets for all variety of sea life that would thrive there, including some dangerous ones. The least interesting ships would be highest up, well within the range of recreational divers. But the lower you descended, the more interesting things would get. Inside the deepest ships would be prizes for the divers who made it that far, as well as enlistment as a "Selkie", a naval underwater mage.

As an added bonus, the bounty of seafood produced by such an artificial reef would be a tremendous boon to the fishing industry.

As might be expected of a fishing and diving people, the Dominion produced more underwater mages than the Empire, but the Ildoan Kingdom unexpectedly produced far more than the others combined. And while, of course, few underwater mages were good enough to become Selkies, the popularity of mage diving was so great that there were many academic and commercial jobs for the rest.

The Imperial navy hiring Ildoan Master Selkies to protect their surface ships was fundamentally different from how the Dominion used them, as a submarine launched offensive and defensive system. Their swift vehicles went through many iterations quickly in a dozen different directions.

And quietly, Tanya crossed trained two dozen of her flight mages for waterborne and amphibious operations. They quickly figured out a new tactic. Normally, when a flight mage plunged into the water, it meant they were a goner. But they would intentionally plunge into the water, rapidly transit a long distance away, then reemerge to take on their enemy from a new angle. It was especially unexpected when they used a decoy to take the plunge, then instead of going down, they would go up. This meant their enemy would be staring down at the water waiting for them to come up, when they descended on them from above, a killing move.

Using goddesses to distribute mana over water was different than from on land. Unlike electricity, a mana field did not ground out on the water, but instead spreads out in a conical fashion towards the bottom. At shallower depths its effects began with a thick algae bloom on the surface, which soon die off and was replaced by kelp and many other sea plants. Deeper down coral grew at a clip a hundred times faster than normal, and was still healthy and robust. Fish entering the area are inclined to stay, as are larger animals.

Dr. Schugel had outdone himself in making computational jewels and operational orbs with extra mana for the Selkies. To start with, their Mark VII mini-submarines were called "Kavitierender Unterwasserlaufkorper", Cavitating Underwater Bodies. They generated a bubble of air that greatly reduced the water resistance around them, so that they could travel at 300km/hr. Likewise their orb mana propulsion could maintain that speed for hundreds of kilometers. With their computational jewel and personal mana they had a detailed virtual display in front of their eyes, so they were not swimming blind, though their vision could be adapted to deep sea operations. Finally they were shielded from the extreme pressure and cold, and had a mana beam weapon that would severely damage a submarine at 200 fathoms.

As a unit, the Selkies in the Legion numbered only a dozen or so. Tanya offered Visha command of the unit. However, a problem arose during her introduction to the team. Sergeant Nero, a large, bearded and hard looking man, a master Selkie from Ildoa, and the center of the unit, had never married because his appearance was so intimidating. Then one day, on the beach, as he sat there on the sand, staring out at the water and praying to God to give him a girlfriend or wife, a young harbor seal sat down next to him and nuzzled his cheek with her snout. From that odd meeting, she followed him around as best as she could, and when he went into the water she danced around him like a ballerina. He didn't think of her as his pet, and made the mistake of telling his peers that she was his girlfriend. Shortly after that there was a fistfight, when they teased him about it.

Since then, she was named Venus and adopted as their unit mascot, and those tough guys did their level best to spoil her. But when Tanya and Visha showed up, all was going well until Visha shook Sergeant Nero's hand. Instantly, Venus flew into a jealous rage, barking, growling and soon chasing Visha around the men, as Sergeant Nero tried to grab her. Finally he tackled her as that very powerful animal struggled and he held her in a bear hug. Tanya and Visha decided to leave the area, which was when one of the other men notice Venus relaxing, her expression changing from rage to contentment.

Tanya and Visha soon agreed that she would remain the Legion's adjutant until a more suitable command became available. Tanya knew that Visha was certain that Tanya was going to make a rude comment about it, so Tanya absolutely refused to do so, biting her lip, instead watching Visha squirm a little.

Ever since Being X had given Tanya the odd proposition that if she were to overthrow the government of the Russy Federation, that he might be willing to relieve her of her curse, she could not get the offer out of her mind. But Being X was such a fickle thing that even if she did do what he said, she could have no confidence in him keeping his word. And after meeting with Sabetay Sevi, she could no longer say with certainty even what the parameters of her curse were, and if Being X would keep those or change them at whim.

However, Sevi did say something else of interest, that both he and Tanya were experiments, and that they were not unique in this, that many other people had been given what he called "blessings", but no matter the outcome, Being X would become bored and lose interest, so abandon them.

The only other experiments that Tanya was pretty sure showed the hand of Being X behind them were that overpowered enemy Colonel who repeatedly tried to kill her, but she eventually killed; that insane girl from the Unified States who went on a positive rampage trying to kill her, and judging how much Tanya shot her, she was pretty sure that she was dead, too. And then there was that vampire she killed, and the bizarre little girl, Leticia Tepes, who Tanya suspected, but had never done anything menacing to her. And finally her dear madman, Dr. Schugel, becoming increasingly deranged about religion, and her sister Tasya, who had clearly been touched by Being X, but had no memory of it. The nine goddesses didn't count as they were man made.

But how many were walking around on this world that she would either have to form an alliance with or fight?

In the meantime, the Imperial General Staff in Berun was learning the expression that "War is Hell, but peace is a mother-." The madness that was the "Peace Party", now ruling in the Commonwealth, virtually disbanding their military, had spread to the exhausted people of the Empire, and was turning an orderly and balanced victory into a chaotic and destructively confused armistice. While its citizens had wisely rejected the radical view found in the Commonwealth, they were very supportive of a more moderate, but still strongly anti-military, anti-nobility party that was showing signs of becoming the next government. Even in the Imperial family it had some supporters, hoping to make the Emperor a figurehead and the Empire a federal republic.

Neither the Legadonia or Francois regions were comfortable or contented in the Empire, and pushed for increasing autonomy, but with growing secessionist movements simmering in the background. So their people there were big backers of the moderate party. Most troublesome was that the International Coalition of Nations, that had become the proxy of the Empire's former enemies, seeking to gain in the peace what they had failed to achieve with war. The dismemberment and destruction of the Empire and the prosecution for war crimes written after the fighting, "attainder by process". This meant redefining war crimes until those who had been following the law were now guilty of having committed crimes that didn't exist when they were carried out.

It also meant that most of the top officers of the Imperial General Staff were now subject to whimsical arrest, and at some point trial and even execution for having won the wars of aggression against the Empire. And with the new elections, it was unlikely the government would protect or even defend them in any way.

To avoid this General Kurt von Rudersdorf decided to seek retirement and become an "elder statesman". General Hans von Zettour opted to go east and act as a military adviser for the Dominion. Colonel Erich von Rerugen had political connections with the moderate party by marriage, so was able to retire and live in a rural area. Many other Generals resigned, and often emigrated.

With a quick promotion to Major General, it was decided that Maximilian Johann von Ugar was to become chief of staff of the shell of what was left of the army, almost by default.

However, before any of them could leave, there needed to be a thorough scrubbing of any records that could be used to prosecute them. The intelligence branch earned their pay in the process by doing an exemplary job of not just scrubbing, but making things look like they hadn't been scrubbed. Volumes were rewritten, omitting names, or incorporating names of long dead officers in the place of living ones. But one name stood out, too obvious for omission, so was replaced by eleven asterisks, and substantial back stories were created to obfuscate what those asterisks meant.

Some veterans were given contradictory "real stories" to use as disinformation if questioned. To muddy the water and eliminate certainty.

Neither Tanya or Visha on Mazotte were privy to what was happening in the Empire. They had been engaged in a grand project on the very large island called Malagasy next to Mazotte. Previously a colony of the Francois Republic, when the Republic fell the Francois colonial government thought to rename it "New Francois", but then, in a fit of jingoism, they decided to eradicate the natives so the island would be "pure Francois." Their means of doing this were grotesque and inhumane, using poison gas, a technique used more than a century before in a different colony.

Even the Francois government in exile was horrified, so sent a military detachment there, arrested, tried and executed most of the colonial government, and ordered all Francois citizens to leave and go to the Afrian Francois colony, abandoning their estates, a futile effort as that colony was soon abandoned as well. This left all of Malagasy uninhabited. Not missing an opportunity, Tanya decided to instead create a second colony for the Empire, carry out her goddess "breadbasket" experiments there and create homesteads for her Legion by importing their families if they had them, and impoverished women and war widows, hopefully with some mage talent, to be their wives if they did not. Her grand scheme was to create an entire nation of mages.

On their return to Berun, still ignorant for the most part, and wearing civilian clothes, they discovered that the primary road to the General Staff Headquarters was blocked, onlookers suggested that it might be for a parade. It was not a parade, but a procession of the horrors of the war wounded demanding compensation.

First came the shot blind. The top half of their faces was extinct and lifeless, only the lower half with their mouth was animate. Not blind from birth, but war, all the sights in their life were still remembered. Their gestures were more violent, and yet more cautious, not yet having adapted to life in darkness. They moved their heads to hear when others spoke. Some still had bandages on their faces, others wearing black patches. Many of them were strong and muscular but to never again feel their strength in work or play. Behind them, helping to guide them, were other veterans who could still see.

Next were those with severe facial and head injuries. Then a large number of leg amputees. Next were the shakers, the shell shocked with permanent body tremor. Then men with one good eye and an arm, pushing those who could not walk on crude wheelchairs. Some of them carried signs that thousands like them were still in the hospital. Others with signs begging for their deserved pensions that had not been given as promised, forcing them to face starvation.

Then in the distance, in the direction of march, Tanya and Visha heard military commands being barked out. They moved to a side street to move faster than through the crowd to see what was happening. What they finally saw was a Corporal, with a squad or two of riflemen, forming a barrier in front of a government building. He was ordering them to get ready to fire a volley at the protesters if they came closer.

Visha could no longer stand it. She left Tanya standing by herself and marched towards the Corporal, and in her best command voice, barked out "Corporal! What are your orders?" Without hesitation, he pulled his sidearm and pointed it at her and yelled, "Madam! You are to return to the sidewalk immediately, or I will shoot you!" Visha was too angry at this insubordination to move, until Tanya grabbed her arm from behind and dragged her back. "Visha!", Tanya plead. "You are not in uniform! Follow his orders or he will shoot you!" Visha was still so angry that she wasn't thinking clearly, so Tanya slapped her across the face.

"Something is going on here! You are not to act until you know what! That is an order!" Visha was starting to get herself under control when, from a different direction, they both heard machine gun fire. The crowd of onlookers reacted, and people started running away from the sound. Within a few seconds, a man ran out from between buildings and said, "The army! The army is shooting at the workers protest!"

Tanya told Visha they were both going back to the car, and on the way had the presence of mind to buy a newspaper. They stopped in a town near Berun where things were quieter, divided the paper between them. It was obvious that just a few days before the elections, things were reaching a boiling point. Berun was in chaos, but very little uncensored news about what was happening. They kept driving and stopped at Dr. Schugel's research facility only to find the buildings deserted, with the gates locked. Being pragmatic, they drove through an isolated part of the fence only to find that all the equipment, even paperwork and books were gone. Looking through the quarters there, they were all bare, even the linens, until she arrived at the room she had stayed in.

On the desk was a nutcracker. "Fair warning," thought Tanya, that Being X is acting to cause the collapse of the Empire.

Tanya decided they would travel to Fiene and there to get some answers. If nothing else, then to get an aircraft to fly them to the Afrian colony. They were both pleased to see that life in Fiene seemed much more normal. Tanya directed them to the office of Dr. Dreuf, and noted that their sign had changed from Mananalysis, to Psychoanalysis. On entering, she saw a great pile of luggage, and then a short time later, Marta Dreuf was hurriedly passing by when she saw them, stopped and apologized before saying that the office was closing.

"We've been out of the country, Dr. Dreuf," said Tanya, "don't know what is going on. Berun is turning into anarchy, so we came here hoping to get some information." Marta explained that weeks before the elections, the government has run out of money, there are riots in the streets and the army has been called out to restore order. "So we are packing up to move to Waldstatte before the borders are closed."

At that point, moving into a common area, Tanya saw Dr. Arthur Adler and Dr. Otis Rank as well as some of their top people. "Is the airport still open?", asked Tanya. "Yes, it is, but only for military use," said Marta. The timing of that statement was good as just about then a young man burst through the door and said that the border was impassable because of the number of people trying to flee, and the army was en route to drive them back.

"How far away is the airport?" asked Tanya. With everyone carrying luggage they managed to quickly load it on a large trailer before climbing onto the military truck towing it. Tanya and Visha got the cases with their military uniforms from their car and changed clothing during the trip. Most of the planes had already been taken, and there were just a few in the maintenance hangar. There was just one man left in the main office, dressed like a mechanic, drinking coffee. Entering the office door behind him, he looked lackadaisical, his feet up on the desk. "Sorry, can't help you. All the planes are gone", he said without looking. And then he looked. He dropped his coffee cup and came to attention, then saluted. "Colonel Degurechaff, Ma'am!" "Who are you?", asked Tanya.

"I'm the pilot assigned to evacuate you, ma'am! Dr. Schugel said that I was to fly VIPs to wherever they wanted to go. I was to wait here until they showed up. I have a large cargo plane ready to go."

Tanya was puzzled. Nobody knew that she and Visha were in Fiena, much less needed to fly out of the country. But before she could say much else, Visha poked her head through the door and said that a bus was coming. "It's a civilian bus, though. I don't see any weapons." Still, Tanya was on edge.

The bus stopped and a man got out. He was carrying a gun in one hand, but relaxed when he saw the pilot wave at him. "He works for Dr. Schugel, too," said the pilot. Then out of the bus came nine very upset looking goddesses, and Tasya. Looking at them and the doctors, the pilot said that he could take all the people, kind of crowded, but there was no way he could take the cargo, all that luggage.

"Can you get as far as the Afrian colony?" He thought a bit and said yes, though not much further. "I'll need to refuel in Ildoa." Tanya then asked the doctors if there was anything vital in their luggage. Not much, just classified patient records, research, and a supply of drugs, a doctor's bag worth, since they were expensive. So after getting the drugs out, with permission from the doctors, Tanya borrowed a jerrycan of petrol, poured it in the trailer, and with everyone loaded on the cargo aircraft and ready to take off, and the engine running, she set the trailer on fire.

After landing in Ildoa, Tanya offered to pay for the fuel with cash from the Empire, but the pilot just laughed and said, haven't you heard, the Empire's paper money is worthless. Pondering this, Tanya felt good that almost all her money in Waldstatte had been converted to Waldstatte Francs, except for the gold. And though while colonial currency was likely still good, she had better diversify her savings there as well, so she could continue to pay her Legion no matter what happens. A hefty bill, but due to very adept investment, one that she could pay far into the future.

But paying for the gas was no problem, as he had a large roll of high denomination Ildoan bills. But neither he nor Tasya and the goddesses knew where Dr. Schugel had wanted them to go, him just saying "Wherever you like. Trust in The Lord to guide you there, as I will trust in The Lord to help me find you when the time is right." Tanya mumbled something to herself about his naivete.

After landing in the colony, Tanya put up Tasya and the goddesses and the pilot and doctors in a nice hotel, and left with Visha to the nearest division command. Tanya was honest in telling the division commanders in a conference call that their units and the Legion were about all that was left of the Empire's army. Fortunately, several of the Empire's newer warships had been making a port call when the word came down, and some of the fleet admirals and command personnel at sea decided to retire here with their ships and crews all of a sudden.

Within two weeks after the election, it was no longer the Empire but the Federal Republic. The Emperor had abdicated. Tanya was somewhat apprehensive about bringing Tasya and the goddesses to Mazotte, but the Legionnaires there were perfect gentlemen around them, (or else!, Visha and Lieutenant Colonel Weiss assured them,) And as a bonus, the pilot had been part of Dr. Schugel's number one operational orbs production process, and had learned how to make them, so Tanya's Malagasy homestead project could begin. Half a dozen homesteads were soon made, and the process had been perfected, with the pioneers adding some finishing touches such as improved roads, when Tanya discovered that Malagasy grew both a low grade coffee and very high quality cocoa.

The coffee experiment was a major success, producing the best coffee Tanya had ever tasted, likewise the already superior cocoa produced chocolate that was so very good that it eventually sold for outrageous prices around the world. Gigantic coffee beans and cocoa pods that were a two man lift.

The strands of mana enhanced ebony, mahogany, and red rosewood, along with less exotic hardwood lumber also brought in the big money for both lumber and furniture. But Tanya's dream was flawed because there was a perpetual labor shortage. Eventually a means was established for widows and orphans to discreetly migrate there from the Federal Republic, the first reason for good husbands and rich farmland, and the latter for an education and productive work that paid good wages. In turn, then unemployed veterans began arriving in great numbers.

Then one morning, glancing out her office window and seeing some of the infantrymen of the legion finishing their morning athletic exercises, Tanya had the idea that some of these soldiers might have other skills. So with the help of Visha and Lieutenant Colonel Weiss, she published a skill assessment questionnaire and discovered she had a lot of masons, carpenters, plumbers, and even electricians, that had been uncommon when they were first enlisted. And she even had a few glass blowers. So buying a lot of equipment and supplies, mostly concrete, in the colony to deliver to Malagasy, she soon had the beginnings of a city underway.

While the goddesses were encouraged to select strong mages to be their husbands, with a homestead and home as a wedding present, they were thrilled, because as orphans, even living on a farm as a servant or worker was a dream almost beyond reach. The idea of having a good husband and being a farm owner was a princess fantasy. When other women started arriving from the depression wracked Federal Republic, most owning only the clothes on their backs, half starved and weak, they were first put into barracks with an adjacent mess hall with unlimited food that now served beef, pork, chicken and goose, plenty of bread and great slabs of fried fish, with beer to drink. Seeing them arrive, the workers redoubled their efforts at home construction, though at first women had to share homes until ones were built for them when they were married. In turn, their most useful work was making garments, shoes, boots and other crafts that had been at a premium.

Very opportune timing, because the refugees from the Unified States in the Federal Republic were in terrible straits, treated as the lowest of the low in their old country, so many worked hard to bring them to Malagasy by the boatload, which meant keeping them in tent cities until housing could be built. But the majority of the men were capable workers, so with adequate supplies first built simple housing then went to work to make better, permanent homes.

A problem was diversity in their agriculture, which had been carefully planned, as there were limits to what they could consume or even profitably export. Just three farms produced all the citrus, fruit and nuts they could use. Just one farm for corn, and two others for wheat. Potatoes and other vegetables in three farms. Animal farms with abattoirs grew and grew for the demand. And of course, plantations for coffee and cocoa, the latter creating their first industry other than lumber, a combination chocolate maker and chocolatier. But with waves of new arrivals, this careful planning had to be changed, expanded for the greater need.

Soon, Tanya had to consider creating a currency to support this. She had a strong, personal bias towards specie backed money instead of dubious fiat currencies, but one of the better young economists at the economics ministry had proposed that instead of limiting it to specie, which were always in shortage, that the list include many other "scarce and useful" non-renewable products. So if, for example, if the price of high quality carbon steel was jumping, the currency would be stabilized by any number of other things, such as aluminum, titanium, precious gems, etc., so it would not be harmed. In doing so, a currency would become so strong and stable that other currencies could use it as a benchmark and "peg". Out of pure sarcasm, Tanya decided that the largest denomination bill they would issue would have the portrait of the former emperor on it. The next largest would have General, now elder statesman, Kurt von Rudersdorf.

This led Tanya to think of the depression catastrophe currently taking place in the Federal Republic. And since she didn't dare to return there under this "Hessian Republic", for fear of arrest, she decided to make some inquiries about that young economist. She soon learned that he had emigrated to Waldstatte, though had not found work there. The East Afrian colony had been functioning autonomously since the collapse of the Empire, and were mostly indifferent when the new government granted it independence unexpectedly, changing its name to just East Afria. But it was still thought of as prosperous, so when the economist got an invitation to attend an economic conference there, air fare and lodging included, he jumped at the chance. He had no idea the conference was of just two people, and was more a job offer, He was to help Tanya create a backed currency "for East Afria", even though it would also be used in Mazotte and Malagasy as well. And since that currency would be "as hard as a diamond", it could be used as a peg for recovery of the Federal Republic from its hyperinflation.

That plan was two fold. First to create a backed currency, called a "pension mark", not a public currency, that would be used to eliminate the immense debt between government and businesses created by the worthless fiat currency currently in use. Then once they were stable, to create a second, backed public currency called an "aurum mark", a gold mark.

Using her connections with the East Afrian government, she had him named the "chief economist" of their government, a position that never existed before, that would give him the credentials to approach the government of the Federal Republic, to be appointed their economics minister. And they would have no idea that Tanya would be sponsoring his ideas from afar. What Tanya wanted for this was, that in exchange for getting their economy in order, they would have to declare a blanket amnesty from domestic and foreign claims of war crimes by Imperial soldiers. No use of "attainder by process" for the new government, nor any agreement or treaty with any other government that used it against them.

The plan worked marvelously. However, until the Federal Republic's economy was fully functional, the number of refugees to Malagasy kept increasing. This included many disabled war veterans, and inclined Tanya to create a major hospital to be run by Tasya in East Afria. Its reputation grew quickly, and soon top doctors from other countries, often motivated by the now international depression, made inquiries about practicing there. Even Dr. Otis Rank and his team moved there to study the long term effects of head trauma on war casualties, though he now also used the title of psychoanalyst.

Likewise, the wealthy and powerful from around the world would go to the hospital for top quality and discreet medical services, which also paid for many poor and indigent patients, which pleased Tasya.

Other than one of the former Imperial admirals using his ship and some as yet untried Selkies borrowed from Tanya to smash a large pirate fleet making problems on trade routes off the coasts of Afria, in exchange for a lot of refined fuel and diamonds, that he used to fund the East Afrian fleet, Mazotte was generally peaceful, as there was little war in Africa for the time being. Since many of the Legion were now supporting themselves and their families on Malagasy homesteads, they had become a mostly inactive reserve. Almost whimsically, one day Tanya asked Visha if she would like to form a government for Malagasy, with the idea of it eventually becoming a nation.

As it turned out, Visha had long imagined what it would be like to do that, and was filled to the brim with ideas. And Tanya was more than happy to turn over the bulging treasury to her, after teaching and testing her thoroughly on economics, planning, social policy, etc. What resulted was a strong blend of the best of the orderly and efficient government of the Empire, and the profound sense of chaotic liberty and Republicanism that had existed in the Unified States prior to Olfrank. With the huge amount of resources closely available in Afria, the future held profound potential. "Government by veterans."

With his field promotion to Colonel, so as to be a peer with the divisional commanders in East Afria, Colonel Weiss also had become the commander of the Legion, which left Tanya with little to do. It was obvious that eventually there would be a great federation of East Afria and Malagasy-Mazotte as well as several other former colonies in Afria, forming a much larger land mass than either the former Empire or the Unified States.

But this short lived boredom for Tanya was relieved with the arrival of some visitors.

A young man with what looked like his younger sister, Sabetay Sevi and Leticia Tepes, along with three other young people, two who looked Oriental but not like each other, and not from the Dominion, and one who looked like a native girl from the Unified States, met Tanya in a coffee shop and Sabetay said that he had met Leticia and then the other three, and like Tanya, they all had been given a "blessing" from the thing that called itself God. They had some interesting stories to tell, and were going to continue to wander around the world looking for others who had been cursed, so if Tanya wanted to join them, she was welcome to do so.

A large memorial was built on Mazotte that had the name of Sergeant First Class Krumholtz and his Viper unit carved into it, and a large metal version of the Silver Wings Assault Medal on display above it. Typically only a flag officer could issue such commendations, but because Tanya had her own separate command, and the commendation was posthumous, by Empire rules she was permitted to issue it.

Living his life on a farm in a rural part of the Federal Republic, Colonel Erich von Rerugen, retired, spent many evenings on his easy chair by the fire, thinking of writing a book about the war, knowing that while the people now just wanted to forget the war, perhaps someday they would appreciate what had happened, at least enough so that it would never happen again. But he could never find the words beyond its title, "The Saga of the Devil of the Rhine: The War Crimes of a Little Girl".


End file.
